“For the sake of our name, and what they will say in the village, I am sorry for this,” she said; and Firman went without a word. But when he was gone Jeanne-Marie’s pride broke down, and in the darkness of the evening she gathered her shawl round her, and crept up to the _métairie_ door. Hour after hour she sat there, not heeding the cold or the damp, her head buried in her hands, her body rocked backwards and forwards. “I pray for Firman’s child,” she muttered without ceasing. “O dear Virgin! O blessed Virgin! I pray for my brother’s child.” And when at length an infant’s feeble cry pierced through the darkness, Jeanne-Marie rose and tottered home, saying to herself contentedly, “The good God himself tells me that all is well.” Perhaps the pangs of maternity quickened the capabilities for compassion in Suzanne’s peasant mind. She sent for Jeanne-Marie two days later, and watched her with silent wonder, but without a sneer, as she knelt weeping and trembling before the small new bundle of humanity. From that day little Henri was the idol of Jeanne-Marie’s heart. All the sane instincts of wifehood and motherhood, shut up irrevocably within the prison of her maiden life, found vent in her devotion to her brother’s child. The natural impulses, so long denied freedom, of whose existence and force she was not even aware, avenged their long suppression in this worship of Firman’s boy. To watch the growth of the childish being, the unveiling of his physical comeliness, and the gradual awakening of his perceptions, became the interest and fascination of her life. Every morning at eleven o’clock, when the cottage showed within the open door all white and shining after her energetic scrubbings, she would put on a clean bodice, and a fresh pink handkerchief for the little coil of hair at the back of her head, and sit ready and impatient, knitting away the time, till one o’clock struck, and she could start for the farm. She would always arrive at the same hour, when the _métairie_ dinner was finished, and Suzanne’s fretful complaints: “Jeanne-Marie, you are so proud, you will not come for the dinner or stay for the supper,” met only a smile and a deprecating shake of the head. On her arrival, if Suzanne were in a good temper, she would surrender Henri to her, and Jeanne-Marie’s hour of heaven reached her. If it were cold, she would sit in the kitchen, crooning snatches of old tunes, or chattering soft nothings in _patois_ to the sleeping child. If fine, she would wander round the garden with him in her arms, sometimes as far as the road, where a chance passer’s exclamation of “Oh, le beau bébé!” would flush her face with pleasure.