to work listlessly: she would sit there dreaming, bored, bored to tears: she had a singular and infinite capacity for weeping: it was her only pleasure. But when her boredom weighed too heavily on her she could not even weep: she was frozen, sick at heart, and dead. Then she would pull herself together: or life would return of its own accord. She would think of her sister, listen to a barrel-organ in the distance, and dream, and slowly count the days until she had gained such and such a sum of money: she would be out in her reckoning, and begin to count all over again: she would fall asleep. So the days passed.... The fits of depression alternated with outbursts of childish chatter and laughter. She would make fun of herself and other people. She watched and judged her employers, and their anxieties fed by their want of occupation, and her mistress's moods and melancholy, and the so-called interests of these so-called people of culture, how they patronized a picture, or a piece of music, or a book of verse. With her rude common sense, as far removed from the snobbishness of the very Parisian servants as from the crass stupidity of the very provincial girls, who only admire what they do not understand, she had a respectful contempt for their dabbling in music, their pointless chatter, and all those perfectly useless and tiresome intellectual smatterings which play so large a part in such hypocritical existences. She could not help silently comparing the real life, with which she grappled, with the imaginary pains and pleasures of that cushioned life, in which everything seems to be the product of boredom. She was not in revolt against it. Things were so: things were so. She accepted everything, knaves and fools alike. She said: "It takes all sorts to make a world." Christophe imagined that she was borne up by her religion: but one day she said, speaking of others who were richer and more happy: "But in the end we shall all be equal." "When?" asked Christophe. "After the social revolution?" "The revolution?" said she. "Oh, there'll be much water flowing under bridges before that. I don't believe that stuff. Things will always be the same." "When shall we all be equal, then?" "When we're dead, of course! That's the end of everybody." He was surprised by her calm materialism. He dared not say to her: "Isn't it a frightful thing, in that case, if there is only one life, that it should be the like of yours, while there are so many others who are happy?" But she seemed to have guessed his thought: she went on phlegmatically, resignedly, and a little ironically: "One has to put up with it. Everybody cannot draw a prize. I've drawn a blank: so much the worse!" She never even thought of looking for a more profitable place outside France. (She had once been offered a situation in America.) The idea of leaving the country never entered her head. She said: "Stones are hard everywhere."