Since she had been living at Les Artaud, she had spent her days in complete beatitude. At last she was satisfying the dream of her life, the only desire which had worried her amidst her weak-minded puerility. She had a poultry-yard, a nook all to herself, where she could breed animals to her heart’s content. And she almost lived there, building rabbit-hutches with her own hands, digging out a pond for the ducks, knocking in nails, fetching straw, allowing no one to assist her. All that La Teuse had to do was to wash her afterwards. The poultry-yard was situated behind the cemetery; and Desirée often had to jump the wall, and run hither and thither among the graves after some fowl whom curiosity had led astray. Right at the end was a shed giving accommodation to the fowls and the rabbits; to the right was a little stable for the goat. Moreover, all the animals lived together; the rabbits ran about with the fowls, the nanny-goat would take a footbath in the midst of the ducks; the geese, the turkeys, the guinea-fowls, and the pigeons all fraternised in the company of three cats. Whenever Desirée appeared at the wooden fence which prevented her charges from making their way into the church, a deafening uproar greeted her. ‘Eh! can’t you hear them?’ she said to her brother, as they reached the dining-room door. But, when she had admitted him and closed the gate behind them, she was assailed so violently that she almost disappeared. The ducks and the geese, opening and shutting their beaks, tugged at her skirts; the greedy hens sprang up and pecked her hands; the rabbits squatted on her feet and then bounded up to her knees; whilst the three cats leapt upon her shoulders, and the goat bleated in its stable at being unable to reach her. ‘Leave me alone, do! all you creatures!’ she cried with a hearty sonorous laugh, feeling tickled by all the feathers, claws, and beaks and paws rubbing against her. However, she did not attempt to free herself. As she often said, she would have let herself be devoured; it seemed so sweet to feel all this life cling to her and encompass her with the warmth of eider-down. At last only one cat persisted in remaining on her back. ‘It’s Moumou,’ she said. ‘His paws are like velvet.’ Then, calling her brother’s attention to the yard, she proudly added: ‘See, how clean it is!’ The yard had indeed been swept out, washed, and raked over. But the disturbed water and the forked-up litter exhaled so fetid and powerful an odour that Abbé Mouret half choked. The dung was heaped against the graveyard wall in a huge smoking mound. ‘What a pile, eh?’ continued Desirée, leading her brother into the pungent vapour, ‘I put it all there myself, nobody helped me. Go on, it isn’t dirty. It cleans. Look at my arms.’ As she spoke she held out her arms, which she had merely dipped into a pail of water--regal arms they were, superbly rounded, blooming like full white roses amidst the manure.