[CHAPTER II.]
One day that summer old Rose, who had suffered from swooning fits, and whose legs were failing her, sent for her grand-niece, Palmyre, to clean the house. Fouan had gone out to prowl round the fields, as usual; and while the wretched creature, drenched with water, was scrubbing with all her might, the other woman followed her about, step by step, both of them going over the same eternal old gossip.
They began with Palmyre's misfortunes, for her brother Hilarion had taken to beating her. The soft-witted cripple had grown malicious; and, as he did not know how strong he was with his fists, which were capable of pulverising stones, she was in terror of her life whenever he seized hold of her. Still she wouldn't have any interference; and when anybody came she sent them away, managing to appease the young fellow by dint of the infinite fondness which she entertained for him. The other week there had been a scandal, which all Rognes was still talking about: such a fight that the neighbours had run in, and had found him behaving abominably.
"Tell me, my child," asked Rose, to elicit some confidential revelation, "what was the brute doing?"
Palmyre, ceasing to scrub, and squatting in her dripping rags, flew into a passion without giving an answer.
"Is it any business of those folks I should like to know? What do they want to come spying in our house for? We don't rob any one."
"Well, well!" resumed the old woman, "all the same, if you do as people say, it's a very dreadful thing."
For an instant the poor creature remained silent; and an expression of suffering came over her features as her eyes vacantly stared afar. Then, bending down once more, she mumbled, with the to-and-fro movement of her skinny arms breaking in upon her words:
"I don't know about it being so very dreadful. The priest sent for me, to say that we both of us should go to hell. Not that poor darling, anyhow. 'A natural, your reverence,' says I to him 'a mere child with no more sense than a babe three days old, and who'd have died if I hadn't fed him—and perhaps it'd have been better for him if he had?' It's my affair alone, isn't it? The day he strangles me, in one of the fits of rage such as have lately come over him, I shall see fast enough whether the blessed God'll forgive me."
Seeing that she would not obtain any fresh particulars, Rose, who had long known the truth, sagely concluded: "Sure enough, things must be one way or the other. But put it as you like, it's not a life you're leading, my girl."