Her aunt tried to remember what she had wanted to say. There were a good many things, lamentations, rebukes, questions, exclamations. But out of them all she could extract nothing: nothing emerged but one great sigh after another. Annette took her at once into the presence of the baby, who was sleeping blissfully, its whole little body relaxed and plump, its head thrown back. She fell into an ecstasy and clasped her hands: the old retainer's heart instantly swore fealty to the new head of the house. From this moment, young once more, she attached herself to the chariot of the little god. At times she remembered that, in spite of all, he was an object of scandal, and she found herself in confusion again. Annette, talking with an affected indifference, watched with the corner of her eye the good old face that was growing so long. "Come, what's the matter?" she asked. "You must give some reason." Once more Aunt Victorine began her confused lamentations. "Yes," said Annette, drumming with her fingers. "Yes . . . But, after all, what's to be done? Would you like to have us lose our dear little boy?" (She knew very well what she was doing in making a point of this coaxing "our.") Her superstitious aunt, quite upset, protested, "Annette, don't say that. It's dangerous. How can you say such things?" "Well, then, you mustn't look that way. As long as our little one is here, as long as he has come, what are we going to do about it? What better can we do than to love him and be happy?" Her aunt might have replied, "Yes, but why should he have come?" But she no longer had the strength to wish him away. Morality might have wished it. The world and religion. Dignity and peace of mind. Peace of mind, above all, perhaps. Her innermost thought, which she did not confess to herself, was, "Heaven help us! If only that unhappy child had not told me anything about it!" In the end, as it was impossible to reconcile contradictory thoughts, Aunt Victorine ceased to think at all. Abandoning herself to instinct, she became the old hen that has spent her life bringing up the chicks of others. She accepted it. But Annette had no particular reason to congratulate herself. There are allies who bring more trouble than help. Through her aunt, annoyances from outside speedily began to reach Annette. Madame Victorine was a gossip, and she lent her ear to everything the neighborhood had to say about her niece's return. She would come running home, bathed in tears, to repeat it to Annette. Annette would scold her affectionately, but she could not help being affected by this stupid tittle-tattle. When the old woman came in she would wonder now with a shiver, "What is she going to tell me this time?" She forbade her to talk. But when her aunt was silent, it was even worse, thanks to what she did not say, her sighs, her look of distress. And Annette was storing up an increasing irritation against this poisonous public opinion which she pretended to ignore.