Observers ought now to understand how it was that La Pechina, from whom passion issued by every pore, awakened in perverted natures the feelings deadened by abuse; just as water fills the mouth at sight of those twisted, blotched, and speckled fruits which gourmands know by experience, and beneath whose skin nature has put the rarest flavors and perfumes. Why did Nicolas, that vulgar laborer, pursue this being who was worthy of a poet, while the eyes of the country-folk pitied her as a sickly deformity? Why did Rigou, the old man, feel the passion of a young one for this girl? Which of the two men was young, and which was old? Was the young peasant as blase as the old usurer? Why did these two extremes of life meet in one common and devilish caprice? Does the vigor that draws to its close resemble the vigor that is only dawning? The moral perversities of men are gulfs guarded by sphinxes; they begin and end in questions to which there is no answer.
The exclamation, formerly quoted, of the countess, “Piccina!” when she first saw Genevieve by the roadside, open-mouthed at sight of the carriage and the elegantly dressed woman within it, will be understood. This girl, almost a dwarf, of Montenegrin vigor, loved the handsome, noble bailiff, as children of her age love, when they do love, that is to say, with childlike passion, with the strength of youth, with the devotion which in truly virgin souls gives birth to divinest poesy. Catherine had just swept her coarse hands across the sensitive strings of that choice harp, strung to the breaking-point. To dance before Michaud, to shine at the Soulanges ball and inscribe herself on the memory of that adored master! What glorious thoughts! To fling them into that volcanic head was like casting live coals upon straw dried in the August sun.
“No, Catherine,” replied La Pechina, “I am ugly and puny; my lot is to sit in a corner and never to be married, but live alone in the world.”
“Men like weaklings,” said Catherine. “You see me, don’t you?” she added, showing her handsome, strong arms. “I please Godain, who is a poor stick; I please that little Charles, the count’s groom; but Lupin’s son is afraid of me. I tell you it is the small kind of men who love me, and who say when they see me go by at Ville-aux-Fayes and at Soulanges, ‘Ha! what a fine girl!’ Now YOU, that’s another thing; you’ll please the fine men.”
“Ah! Catherine, if it were true—that!” cried the bewitched child.
“It is true, it is so true that Nicolas, the handsomest man in the canton, is mad about you; he dreams of you, he is losing his mind; and yet all the other girls are in love with him. He is a fine lad! If you’ll put on a white dress and yellow ribbons, and come to Socquard’s for the midsummer ball, you’ll be the handsomest girl there, and all the fine people from Ville-aux-Fayes will see you. Come, won’t you?—See here, I’ve been cutting grass for the cows, and I brought some boiled wine in my gourd; Socquard gave it me this morning,” she added quickly, seeing the half-delirious expression in La Pechina’s eyes which women understand so well. “We’ll share it together, and you’ll fancy the men are in love with you.”
During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step on, had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which his sister had seated La Pechina. Catherine, who had now and then cast her eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled wine.
“Here, take some,” she said, offering it.
“It burns me!” cried Genevieve, giving back the gourd, after taking two or three swallows from it.
“Silly child!” replied Catherine; “see here!” and she emptied the rustic bottle without taking breath. “See how it slips down; it goes like a sunbeam into the stomach.”