She thought of the future now as she looked upward to the bit of
sky which was all the high walls suffered her to see; then she turned
her eyes to the angle where the sun crept on, and to the roof above
the room in which he had slept. Hers was the solitary love, the
persistent love, which glides into every thought and becomes the
substance, or, as our fathers might have said, the tissue of life.
When the would-be friends of Pere Grandet came in the evening for
their game at cards, she was gay and dissimulating; but all the
morning she talked of Charles with her mother and Nanon. Nanon had
brought herself to see that she could pity the sufferings of her young
mistress without failing in her duty to the old master, and she would
say to Eugenie,--
"If I had a man for myself I'd--I'd follow him to hell, yes, I'd
exterminate myself for him; but I've none. I shall die and never know
what life is. Would you believe, mamz'elle, that old Cornoiller (a
good fellow all the same) is always round my petticoats for the sake
of my money,--just for all the world like the rats who come smelling
after the master's cheese and paying court to you? I see it all; I've
got a shrewd eye, though I am as big as a steeple. Well, mamz'elle, it
pleases me, but it isn't love."
X
Two months went by. This domestic life, once so monotonous, was now
quickened with the intense interest of a secret that bound these women
intimately together.
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