Jeanne had left off thinking about her, when she suddenly noticed that she could not hear the girl moving. She called: "Rosalie." There was no answer. Then she thought that the maid must have gone quietly out of the room without her hearing her, and she cried in a louder tone: "Rosalie!" Again she received no answer, and she was just stretching out her hand to ring the bell, when she heard a low moan close beside her. She started up in terror. Rosalie was sitting on the floor with her back against the bed, her legs stretched stiffly out, her face livid, and her eyes staring straight before her. Jeanne rushed to her side. "Oh, Rosalie! What is the matter? what is it?" she asked in affright. The maid did not answer a word, but fixed her wild eyes on her mistress and gasped for breath, as if tortured by some excruciating pain. Then, stiffening every muscle in her body, and stifling a cry of anguish between her clenched teeth, she slipped down on her back, and all at once, something stirred underneath her dress, which clung tightly round her legs. Jeanne heard a strange, gushing noise, something like the death-rattle of someone who is suffocating, and then came a long low wail of pain; it was the first cry of suffering of a child entering the world. The sound came as a revelation to her, and, suddenly losing her head, she rushed to the top of the stairs, crying: "Julien! Julien!" "What do you want?" he answered, from below. She gasped out, "It's Rosalie who--who--" but before she could say any more Julien was rushing up the stairs two at a time; he dashed into the bedroom, raised the girl's clothes, and there lay a creased, shriveled, hideous, little atom of humanity, feebly whining and trying to move its limbs. He got up with an evil look on his face, and pushed his distracted wife out of the room, saying: "This is no place for you. Go away and send me Ludivine and old Simon." Jeanne went down to the kitchen trembling all over, to deliver her husband's message, and then afraid to go upstairs again, she went into the drawing-room, where a fire was never lighted, now her parents were away. Soon she saw Simon run out of the house, and come back five minutes after with Widow Dentu, the village midwife. Next she heard a noise on the stairs which sounded as if they were carrying a body, then Julien came to tell her that she could go back to her room. She went upstairs and sat down again before her bedroom fire, trembling as if she had just witnessed some terrible accident. "How is she?" she asked. Julien, apparently in a great rage, was walking about the room in a preoccupied, nervous way. He did not answer his wife for some moments, but at last he asked, stopping in his walk: "Well, what do you mean to do with this girl?" Jeanne looked at her husband as if she did not understand his question. "What do you mean?" she said. "I don't know; how should I?" "Well, anyhow, we can't keep that child in the house," he cried, angrily.