Two years had passed since Auguste and Bertrand started on their travels. During that period Denise had been to Paris six times in quest of news of the travellers; but Schtrack had never been able to give her any, and she heard nothing from Virginie. At the end of two years Mère Fourcy fell sick, and, despite her niece’s care, soon died in her arms.
The loss of her aunt caused Denise the keenest sorrow; we can but regret profoundly those who throughout their lives have sought only to make us happy, without ever reminding us of what they have done for us—the latter being a method of conferring favors which freezes gratitude; for there are many people who do good, but there are very few good people.
Denise was left alone on earth but for Coco, who was not yet eight. She let her house, which was now too large for her, and went to live in Coco’s cottage, to which she added a small wing. There Denise was happier: it seemed to her that she was nearer Auguste. She was no longer obliged to be a milkmaid, and she hired an old peasant woman who undertook the house work. Denise busied herself about her garden and sought additional knowledge in books. In her aunt’s lifetime she was rarely able to gratify her taste for reading, because Mère Fourcy considered that she already knew too much for a peasant. But nothing now prevented her from following her inclination and trying to train her mind.
One by one Denise laid aside the coarse woolen skirt, the apron, the sackcloth waist; she wore clothes which, while they were most simple and unpretending, approximated the costume of Parisian ladies. Thereupon the villagers said to one another:
“Denise Fourcy is trying to play the fine lady, that’s sure. Don’t you see that since her aunt died she don’t dress like us any more, but puts on style and uses big words when she talks?”
Denise cared little what the people of the village thought; her only desire was to please him whom she still expected; and she would say to herself as she looked in her mirror:
“Perhaps he’ll like me better like this. He won’t find me so awkward and embarrassed as I was; but it will be all the same to him, for he doesn’t love me, and he thinks that I don’t love him either. Mon Dieu! why did I tell him that? It was Monsieur Bertrand that made me do it; he deceived me by telling me that Auguste wouldn’t come to the village if I loved him. Yes, I am sure that he deceived me; for it was after that that Auguste received me so unkindly in Paris; and he didn’t come here again. But when I see him, ah! then I’ll tell him the truth; it is always wrong to lie. And I will beg him not to lie to me either.”
Another year passed; Denise was twenty and Coco nine. The child was happy; mirth and health shone on his pretty face. Denise was still melancholy; she tried in vain to banish from her mind the memory of Auguste whom she was beginning to lose hope of seeing again.
“Perhaps he has settled in some foreign land!” she would say to herself; “perhaps he is married—and will never come back!”
Then her eyes would fill with tears, and the child’s caresses served only to intensify her grief, for he was forever asking her: