She had not forgotten that during a whole season I had spent all my recreation time trying to teach her to learn it by heart. And now she delighted in making me rest.
Veronique's work was the preparation of the vegetables, and she also took the meat in from the butcher. She used to stand stiffly by the scales until the butcher's boys put the meat on. She was always grumbling at them, saying that the meat was cut too small or cut too big. The butcher boys used to get angry with her and were rude to her sometimes, and Sister Désirée-des-Anges told me at last to take the meat in instead of her. She came to the scales just the same next day; but I was there with Sister Désirée-des-Anges, who was telling me how to weigh the meat.
One morning one of the two butchers looked at me and spoke my name. Sister Désirée-des-Anges and I looked at the butcher boy in surprise. He was a new one, but I soon recognized him. He was the eldest son of Jean le Rouge. He was delighted to see me again, and told me that his parents had got a good place at the Lost Ford. He himself didn't care about working in the fields, and had found work with a butcher in the town. Then he told me that the Lost Ford was quite near Villevieille, and asked me if I knew it. I nodded my head to say that I did. He went on to say that his father and mother had been there for some months, and that there had been feasting there last week because Henri Deslois was married. I heard him say a few words more which I didn't understand. Then the daylight in the kitchen turned into black night, and I felt the tiles give way under my feet and drag me down into a bottomless hole. I remember Sister Désirée-des-Anges coming to help me, but an animal had fastened itself on my chest. It made a dreadful sound which it hurt me to hear. It was like a horrible sob which always stopped at the same place. Then the light came back again, and I could see above me the faces of Sister Désirée-des-Anges and Mélanie. Both were smiling anxiously, and Mélanie's broad, red face looked like Sister Désirée-des-Anges' pointed pale one. I sat up in bed, wondering why I was there by daylight, but I didn't get up. I remembered little Jean le Rouge, and for hours and hours I fought with my pain.
When Sister Désirée-des-Anges came into the room at bedtime she sat down on the foot of my bed. She put her two hands together like the saints did. "Tell me of your sorrow," she said. I told her, and it seemed to me that every word I spoke took some of my suffering away with it.
When I had told her everything, Sister Désirée-des-Anges fetched "The Imitation of Jesus Christ," and began to read aloud. She read in a gentle and resigned voice, and there were words which sounded like the end of a moan.
On the days which followed, I saw little Jean le Rouge again. He told me some more about the Lost Ford, and while he said how happy his parents were and how kind the master was to them, I could see the house on the hill with its garden in flower, and its spring from which the little brooklets crawled down to the river, hiding themselves under the broom. I often spoke of it to Sister Désirée-des-Anges, who listened to me meditatively. She knew the neighbourhood and every corner of the place, and one evening, when she sat dreaming and I asked her what she was thinking about, she said, "Summer will be over soon, and I was thinking that the trees were full of fruit."
During the month of September a number of religious paid visits to the Mother Superior. Ox Eye used to ring the bell to announce them. Every time she rang Veronique went out to see who was coming in. She always had something disagreeable to say about each one of the sisters whom she recognized. One evening the bell sounded. Veronique, who was looking out, said, "Well, here's one whom nobody expected." She put her head into the kitchen again, and said, "It is Sister Marie-Aimée." The big spoon which I had in my hand slipped through my fingers and dropped into the copper. I rushed to the door, pushing past Veronique, who wanted to keep me back. Mélanie rushed after me. "Don't," she said, "the Mother Superior can see you." But I rushed out to Sister Marie-Aimée. I rushed into her arms with such force that we nearly fell over together. She clasped me tight and held me. She was trembling and almost crazy with joy. She took my head in her hands, and, as if I had been quite a little child, she kissed me all over my face. Her stiff linen cap made a noise like paper when you crumple it up, and her broad sleeves fell back to her shoulders. Mélanie was right, the Mother Superior saw me. She came out of the chapel and came towards us. Sister Marie-Aimée saw her. She stopped kissing me, and put her hand on my shoulder. I put my arm round her, fearing that she would be taken away from me, and the two of us stood and watched the Mother Superior. She passed in front of us without raising her eyes, and didn't seem to see Sister Marie-Aimée, who bowed gravely to her.
As soon as she had gone I dragged Sister Marie-Aimée off to the old bench. She stopped a moment, and before sitting down she said, "It is as though things were waiting for us." She sat down. She leaned against the linden tree, and I kneeled down in the grass at her feet. There were no more rays in her eyes. It was as though the colours in them had all been mixed up together. Her dear little face had grown smaller, and seemed to have gone further back into her cap. Her stomacher had not the beautiful curve on her chest that it used to have, and her hands were so thin that the blue veins in them showed up quite clearly. She hardly glanced at the window of her room, but looked out on the linden trees and round the courtyard, and as she caught sight of the Mother Superior's house, these words fell from her like a sigh, "We must forgive others if we wish to be forgiven." Then she looked at me again, and said, "Your eyes are sad." She passed the palms of her hands over my eyes, as if she wanted to wipe out something which displeased her, and, keeping them there so that my eyes remained shut, "How we suffer,"' she said. Then she took her hands away and clasped mine, and, with her eyes on my face, she said, as though she were praying, "My sweet daughter, listen to me. Never become a poor religious." She heaved a long sigh of regret, and said, "Our dress of black and white tells others that we are creatures of strength and of brightness. At our bidding all tears are dried, and all who suffer come to us for consolation, but nobody thinks of our own suffering. We are like women without faces." Then she spoke of the future. She said, "I am going where the missionaries go. I shall live there in a house full of terror. Before my eyes will pass unceasingly everything that is hideous, everything that is ugly, everything that is bad." I listened to her deep voice. There was a note of passion in it. It was as though she were taking on to her own shoulders all the suffering of the world. Her fingers loosed mine. She passed them over my cheeks, and in a gentle voice, and sweet, she said, "The purity of your face will always remain graven on my mind." Then she looked out, away and past me, and added, "God has given us remembrance, and it is not in anybody's power to take that away from us." She got up from the bench. I went with her across the yard, and when Ox Eye had closed the heavy gate behind her, I stood and listened to the echo of its closing.