At last, as luck would have it, she reached a large farmhouse, and as she had by this time become weary and hungry, she followed her natural instincts, knocked at {113}the door, and asked for victuals and leave to rest herself. It was an old woman who opened the door, whose husband was the occupier of the farm, and being kindly-disposed people, they granted Mathilde’s request, allowed her to sit down in the kitchen, and gave her a bowl of milk and a large piece of brown bread, which she gratefully devoured, and felt much the better for it. Then the old couple began to question her about her condition and ways of life, and when she had invented some tale about having seen better days, and being driven by misfortune to seek a living where she could get it, they expressed great pity, and professed themselves very willing to assist her in any manner within their power. True, they had not much to offer; but the boy who kept the pigs had lately gone off to the wars, and if pig-keeping was not beyond her, why, the place was very much at her service. Now, if there was anything which Mathilde disliked, it was a pig. The greediness and dirtiness of the animal she deemed objectionable, and extended her dislike to it even when cooked and salted. She never touched roast pork, avoided it all the more when boiled, abhorred sausages, and looked the other way when anybody offered her bacon. But, having no very definite idea as to where she could go to if she left the farm, and thinking that, at all events, it might serve her as a temporary home until something better should turn up, she determined upon accepting the generous offer of the worthy couple, and expressed her gratitude in terms which increased the favourable opinion they had already formed of her manners and character. That night she slept beneath their hospitable roof, and {114}next morning her duties were pointed out to her, and she wandered forth upon the side of the hill near the farm, in close attendance upon a herd of pigs, to watch whom would be her daily duty. Although Mathilde’s objection to the creatures may have been foolish and unreasonable, it will probably be conceded that the pig is not an animal which the majority of mankind would choose as a special pet or favourite; and to a person nurtured in the luxurious habits of a baronial castle, and trained in the intellectual refinement of conventual life, the occupation of keeping pigs on the side of a hill could hardly ever be congenial. It is, therefore, not surprising that Mathilde found it first monotonous, secondly tiresome, thirdly exceedingly disagreeable. She would sit for hours together, grasping in both hands her pig-driving stick, and musing upon things far removed from considerations of pigs or pork.