Nevertheless, I distrust this man. He disturbs me, and at the same time he interests me prodigiously. Often I have seen frightful things passing in the troubled water, in the dead water of his eyes. Since I have been observing him, I have changed the opinion that I formed of him when I first entered this house,--the opinion that he is a gross, stupid, and clumsy peasant. I ought to have examined him more attentively. Now I think him singularly shrewd and crafty, and even better than shrewd, worse than clever; I know not how to express myself concerning him. And then--is it because I am in the habit of seeing him every day?--I no longer find him so ugly or so old. Habit, like a fog, tends to palliate things and beings. Little by little it obscures the features of a face and rubs down deformities; if you live with a humpback day in and day out, after a time he loses his hump. But there is something else; I am discovering something new and profound in Joseph, which upsets me. It is not harmony of features or purity of lines that makes a man beautiful to a woman. It is something less apparent, less defined, a sort of affinity, and, if I dare say so, a sort of sexual atmosphere, pungent, terrible, or intoxicating, to the haunting influence of which certain women are susceptible, even in spite of themselves. Well, such an atmosphere emanates from Joseph. The other day I admired him as he was lifting a cask of wine. He played with it like a child with its rubber ball. His exceptional strength, his supple skill, the terrible leverage of his loins, the athletic push of his shoulders, all combined to make me dreamy. The strange and unhealthy curiosity, prompted by fear as much as by attraction, which is excited in me by the riddle of these suspicious manners, of this closed mouth, of this impressing look, is doubled by this muscular power, this bull's back. Without being able to explain it to myself further, I feel that there is a secret correspondence between Joseph and me,--a physical and moral tie that is becoming a little more binding every day. From the window of the linen-room where I work, I sometimes follow him with my eyes in the garden. There he is, bending over his work, his face almost touching the ground, or else kneeling against the wall where the espaliers stand in line. And suddenly he disappears, he vanishes. Lower your head, and, before you can raise it again, he is gone. Does he bury himself in the ground? Does he pass through the walls? From time to time I have occasion to go to the garden to give him an order from Madame. I do not see him anywhere, and I call him: "Joseph! Joseph! where are you?" Suddenly, without a sound, Joseph arises before me, from behind a tree, from behind a vegetable-bed. He rises before me in the sunlight, with his severe and impenetrable mask, his hair glued to his skull, and his open shirt revealing his hairy chest. Where does he come from? From what hole does he spring? From what height has he fallen?