_Done into English by the Editor_ One evening in November, the Eve of Saint Catherine, the iron gate of the Central Prison of Auberive turned on its hinges and allowed a woman of about thirty years to pass out. She was clad in a faded woollen gown, and her head was surmounted by a bonnet of linen that in an odd fashion framed her face--pallid and puffed by that grayish fat which is born of prison fare. She was a prisoner whom they had just liberated. Her fellow-convicts called her _La Bretonne_. Condemned for infanticide, it was just six years since the prison van had brought her to _la Centrale_. At length, after having donned again her street clothes, and drawing from the registry the stock of money which had been saved for her, she found herself once more free, with her road-pass viséed for Langres. The post-cart for Langres had left; so, cowed and awkward, she directed her way stumblingly toward the principal inn of the place, and in scarcely a confident voice asked a lodging for the night. The inn was full, and the landlady, who did not care to harbor “one of those jail-birds,” advised her to push on as far as the little public-house situated at the other end of the village. _La Bretonne_, more awkward and frightened than ever, went on her way, and knocked at the door of the public-house, which, to speak precisely, was only a drinking place for laborers. This proprietress also cast over her a distrustful eye, doubtless scenting a woman from _la Centrale_, and finally turned her away on the pretense that she did not keep lodgers. _La Bretonne_ dared not insist, she merely moved away with her head down, while from the depths of her soul arose a sullen hate against this world which so repulsed her. She had no other recourse than to travel to Langres on foot. In late November night comes quickly. Soon she found herself enveloped in darkness, on the gray road which stretched between the edges of the woods, and where the north wind whistled rudely as it drove the heaps of dead leaves hither and yon. After six years of sedentary life as a recluse, she no longer knew how to walk; and the joints of her knees were rickety; her feet, accustomed to sabots, were tortured in her new shoes. After about a league they were blistered, and she herself was exhausted. She sat down on a milestone, shivering and asking herself if she must die of cold and hunger in this black night, under that icy wind which so chilled her. Suddenly, in the solitude of the road, over the squalls of wind she seemed to hear the trailing sounds of a voice in song. She strained her ears and distinguished the cadence of one of those caressing and monotonous chants with which one lulls children to sleep. Thereupon, rising again to her feet, she pressed on in the direction of the voice, and at the turn of a cross-road she saw a light which reddened through the branches.