Then she gazed out before her, with a feeling of dolorous surprise.  She had certainly been told that the old enclosure of the Fouques was now joined to the Jas-Meiffren; but she would never have thought the associations of her youth could have vanished so completely.  It seemed as though some tempest had carried off everything that her memory cherished.  The old dwelling, the large kitchen-garden, the beds of green vegetables, all had disappeared.  Not a stone, not a tree of former times remained.  And instead of the scene amidst which she had grown up, and which in her mind’s eye she had seen but yesterday, there lay a strip of barren soil, a broad patch of stubbles, bare like a desert.  Henceforward, when, on closing her eyes, she might try to recall the objects of the past, that stubble would always appear to her like a shroud of yellowish drugget spread over the soil, in which her youth lay buried.  In the presence of that unfamiliar commonplace scene her heart died, as it were, a second time.  Now all was completely, finally ended.  She was robbed even of her dreams of the past.  Then she began to regret that she had yielded to the attraction of that white opening, of that doorway gaping upon the days which were now for ever lost.

She was about to retire and close the accursed door, without even seeking to discover who had opened it, when she suddenly perceived Miette and Silvere.  And the sight of the two young lovers, who, with hanging heads, nervously awaited her glance, kept her on the threshold, quivering with yet keener pain.  She now understood all.  To the very end, she was destined to picture herself there, clasped in Macquart’s arms in the bright sunshine.  Yet a second time had the door served as an accomplice.  Where love had once passed, there was it passing again.  ’Twas the eternal and endless renewal, with present joys and future tears.  Aunt Dide could only see the tears, and a sudden presentiment showed her the two children bleeding, with stricken hearts.  Overwhelmed by the recollection of her life’s sorrow, which this spot had just awakened within her, she grieved for her dear Silvere.  She alone was guilty; if she had not formerly had that door made Silvere would not now be at a girl’s feet in that lonely nook, intoxicating himself with a bliss which prompts and angers the jealousy of death.

After a brief pause, she went up to the young man, and, without a word, took him by the hand.  She might, perhaps, have left them there, chattering under the wall, had she not felt that she herself was, to some extent, an accomplice in this fatal love.  As she came back with Silvere, she turned on hearing the light footfall of Miette, who, having quickly taken up her pitcher, was hastening across the stubble.  She was running wildly, glad at having escaped so easily.  And aunt Dide smiled involuntarily as she watched her bound over the ground like a runaway goat.

“She is very young,” she murmured, “she has plenty of time.”