Wishing to avoid all arguments and quarrels, she never made any remark, but each fresh proof of her husband's avarice hurt her like the prick of a needle. It seemed so petty, so odious to her, brought up as she had been in a family where money was never thought of any importance. How often she had heard her mother say: "Money is made to be spent"; but now Julien kept saying to her: "Will you never be cured of throwing money away?" Whenever he could manage to reduce a salary or a bill by a few pence he would slip the money into his pocket, saying, with a pleased smile:
"Little streams make big rivers."
Jeanne would sometimes find herself dreaming as she used to do before she was married. She would gradually stop working, and with her hands lying idle in her lap and her eyes fixed on space, she built castles in the air as if she were a young girl again. But the voice of Julien, giving an order to old Simon, would call her back to the realities of life, and she would take up her work, thinking, "Ah, that is all over and done with now," and a tear would fall on her fingers as they pushed the needle through the stuff.
Rosalie, who used to be so gay and lively, always singing snatches of songs as she went about her work, gradually changed also. Her plump round cheeks had fallen in and lost their brightened color, and her skin was muddy and dark. Jeanne often asked her if she were ill, but the little maid always answered with a faint blush, "No, madame," and got away as quickly as she could. Instead of tripping along as she had always done, she now dragged herself painfully from room to room, and seemed not even to care how she looked, for the peddlers in vain spread out their ribbons and corsets and bottles of scent before her; she never bought anything from them now.
At the end of January, the heavy clouds came across the sea from the north, and there was a heavy fall of snow. In one night the whole plain was whitened, and, in the morning the trees looked as if a mantle of frozen foam had been cast over them.
Julien put on his high boots, and passed his time in the ditch between the wood and the plain, watching for the migrating birds. Every now and then his shots would break the frozen silence of the fields, and hordes of black crows flew from the trees in terror. Jeanne, tired of staying indoors, would go out on the steps of the house, where, in the stillness of this snow-covered world, she could hear the bustle of the farms, or the far-away murmur of the waves and the soft continual rustle of the falling snow.
On one of these cold, white mornings she was sitting by her bedroom fire, while Rosalie, who looked worse and worse every day, was slowly making the bed. All at once Jeanne heard a sigh of pain behind her. Without turning her head, she asked:
"What is the matter with you, Rosalie?"
The maid answered as she always did:
"Nothing, madame," but her voice seemed to die away as she spoke.