"What! No young man ever caught hold of you? You've no lovers?"
"No, no."
She had grown quite pale and serious, with her long grief-stained face, already worn and stupefied by labour, and retaining only the clear, shallow, faithful eyes of a hound. Perchance she was recalling her miserable, friendless, loveless life, the existence of a beast of burden whipped back at night, heavy-eyed, to its stable. She had stopped short, and stood grasping her fork, with a far-away look towards the distant country-side, that she had never even seen.
There was a silence. Françoise was listening, motionless, at the top of the stack; while Jean, who had also stopped to take breath, went on with his banter, hesitating to say what was on the tip of his tongue. At length he resolved to speak out.
"Then it's all lies what they say about you and Hilarion?" he asked.
Palmyre's face suddenly turned from white to crimson, the rush of blood momentarily restoring her the aspect of her lost youth. She stammered with surprise and vexation, at a loss for the disclaimer she desired.
"Oh, the backbiters! Only to think of it!"
Françoise and Jean, with a resumption of noisy mirth, spoke both at once, pressed her hard, and flurried her. Why, in the ruined cow-shed, where Palmyre and Hilarion lodged, there was hardly any room to move about. Their mattresses lay touching on the floor; how easy it was to make a mistake in the dark!
"Come, it's true; confess it's true! Besides, it's well known."