Jeanne's thoughts were on something else, when she noticed that the girl was not moving about the room. She called: "Rosalie!" Still no sound. Then, thinking she might have left the room, she cried in a louder tone: "Rosalie!" and she was reaching out her arm to ring the bell, when a deep moan close beside her made her start up with a shudder. The little servant, her face livid, her eyes haggard, was seated on the floor, her legs stretched out, and her back leaning against the bed. Jeanne sprang toward her. "What is the matter with you--what is the matter?" she asked. The girl did not reply, did not move. She stared vacantly at her mistress and gasped as though she were in terrible pain. Then, suddenly, she slid down on her back at full length, clenching her teeth to smother a cry of anguish. Jeanne suddenly understood, and almost distracted, she ran to the head of the stairs, crying: "Julien, Julien!" "What do you want?" he replied from below. She hardly knew how to tell him. "It is Rosalie, who----" Julien rushed upstairs two steps at a time, and going abruptly into the room, he found the poor girl had just been delivered of a child. He looked round with a wicked look on his face, and pushing his terrified wife out of the room, exclaimed: "This is none of your affair. Go away. Send me Ludivine and old Simon." Jeanne, trembling, descended to the kitchen, and then, not daring to go upstairs again, she went into the drawing-room, in which there had been no fire since her parents left, and anxiously awaited news. She presently saw the man-servant running out of the house. Five minutes later he returned with Widow Dentu, the nurse of the district. Then there was a great commotion on the stairs as though they were carrying a wounded person, and Julien came in and told Jeanne that she might go back to her room. She trembled as if she had witnessed some terrible accident. She sat down again before the fire, and asked: "How is she?" Julien, preoccupied and nervous, was pacing up and down the room. He seemed to be getting angry, and did not reply at first. Then he stopped and said: "What do you intend to do with this girl?" She did not understand, and looked at her husband. "Why, what do you mean? I do not know." Then suddenly flying into a rage, he exclaimed: "We cannot keep a bastard in the house." Jeanne was very much bewildered, and said at the end of a long silence: "But, my friend, perhaps we could put it out to nurse?" He cut her short: "And who will pay the bill? You will, no doubt." She reflected for some time, trying to find some way out of the difficulty; at length she said: "Why, the father will take care of it, of the child; and if he marries Rosalie, there will be no more difficulty." Julien, as though his patience were exhausted, replied furiously: "The father!--the father!--do you know him--the father? No, is it not so? Well then----?"