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THE CONQUEST OF PLASSANS

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I

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      Désirée clapped her hands. She was fourteen years old and big and strong for her age, but she laughed like a little girl of five.

      'Mother! mother!' she cried, 'look at my doll!'

      She showed her mother a strip of rag out of which she had been trying for the last quarter of an hour to manufacture a doll by rolling it and tying it at one end with a piece of string. Marthe raised her eyes from the stockings that she was darning with as much delicacy of work as though she were embroidering, and smiled at Désirée.

      'Oh! but that's only a baby,' she said; 'you must make a grown-up doll and it must have a dress, you know, like a lady.'

      She gave the child some clippings of print stuff which she found in her work-table, and then again devoted all her attention to her stockings. They were both sitting at one end of the narrow terrace, the girl on a stool at her mother's feet. The setting sun of a still warm September evening cast its calm peaceful rays around them; and the garden below, which was already growing grey and shadowy, was wrapped in perfect silence. Outside, not a sound could be heard in that quiet corner of the town.

      They both worked on for ten long minutes without speaking. Désirée was taking immense pains to make a dress for her doll. Every few moments Marthe raised her head and glanced at the child with an expression in which sadness was mingled with affection. Seeing that the girl's task seemed too much for her, she at last said:

      'Give it to me. I will put in the sleeves for you.'

      As she took up the doll, two big lads of seventeen and eighteen came down the steps. They ran to Marthe and kissed her.

      'Don't scold us, mother!' cried Octave gaily. 'I took Serge to listen to the band. There was such a crowd on the Cours Sauvaire!'

      'I thought you had been kept in at college,' his mother said, 'or I should have felt very uneasy.'

      Désirée, now altogether indifferent to her doll, had thrown her arms round Serge's neck, saying to him:

      'One of my birds has flown away! The blue one, the one you gave me!'

      She was on the point of crying. Her mother, who had imagined this trouble to be forgotten, vainly tried to divert her thoughts by showing her the doll. The girl still clung to her brother's arm and dragged him away with her, while repeating:

      'Come and let us look for it.'

      Serge followed her with kindly complaisance and tried to console her. She led him to a little conservatory, in front of which there was a cage placed on a stand; and here she told him how the bird had escaped just as she was opening the door to prevent it from fighting with a companion.

      'Well, there's nothing very surprising in that!' cried Octave, who had seated himself on the balustrade of the terrace. 'She is always interfering with them, trying to find out how they are made and what it is they have in their throats that makes them sing. The other day she was carrying them about in her pockets the whole afternoon to keep them warm.'

      'Octave!' said Marthe, in a tone of reproach; 'don't tease the poor child.'

      But Désirée had not heard him; she was explaining to Serge with much detail how the bird had flown away.

      'It just slipped out, you see, like that, and then it flew over yonder and lighted on Monsieur Rastoil's big pear-tree. Next it flew off to the plum-tree at the bottom, came back again and went right over my head into the big trees belonging to the Sub-Prefecture, and I've never seen it since; no, never since.'

      Her eyes filled with tears.

      'Perhaps it will come back again,' Serge ventured to say.

      'Oh! do you think so? I think I will put the others into a box, and leave the door of the cage open all night.'

      Octave could not restrain his laughter, but Marthe called to Désirée:

      'Come and look here! come and look here!'

      Then she gave her the doll. It was a magnificent one now. It had a stiff dress, a head made of a pad of calico, and arms of list sewn on at the shoulders. Désirée's eyes lighted up with sudden joy. She sat down again upon the stool, and, forgetting all about the bird, began to kiss the doll and dandle it in her arms with childish delight.

      Serge had gone to lean upon the balustrade near his brother, and Marthe had resumed her darning.

      'And so the band has been playing, has it?' she asked.

      'It plays every Thursday,' Octave replied. 'You ought to have come to hear it, mother. All the town was there; the Rastoil girls, Madame de Condamin, Monsieur Paloque, the mayor's wife and daughter—why didn't you come too?'

      Marthe did not raise her eyes, but softly replied as she finished darning a hole:

      'You know very well, my dears, that I don't care about going out. I am quite contented here; and then it is necessary that someone should stay with Désirée.'

      Octave opened his lips to reply, but he glanced at his sister and kept silent. He remained where he was, whistling softly and raising his eyes now towards the trees of the Sub-Prefecture, noisy with the twittering of the sparrows which were preparing to retire for the night—and now towards Monsieur Rastoil's pear-trees behind which the sun was setting. Serge had taken a book out of his pocket and was reading it attentively. Soft silence brooded over the terrace as it lay there in the yellow light that was gradually growing fainter. Marthe continued darning, ever and anon glancing at her three children in the peaceful quiet of the evening.

      'Everyone seems to be late to-day,' she said after a time. 'It is nearly six o'clock, and your father hasn't come home yet. I think he must have gone to Les Tulettes.'

      'Oh! then, no wonder he's late!' exclaimed Octave. 'The peasants at Les Tulettes are never in a hurry to let him go when once they get hold of him. Has he gone there to buy some wine?'

      'I don't know,' Marthe replied. 'He isn't fond, you know, of talking to me about his business.'

      Then there was another interval of silence. In the dining-room, the window of which opened on to the terrace, old Rose had just begun to lay the table with much angry clattering of crockery and plate. She seemed to be in a very bad temper, and banged the chairs about while breaking into snatches of grumbling and growling. At last she went to the street door, and, craning out her head, reconnoitred the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture. After some minutes' waiting, she came to the terrace-steps and cried:

      'Monsieur Mouret isn't coming home to dinner, then?'

      'Yes, Rose, wait a little longer,' Marthe replied quietly.

      'Everything is getting burned to cinders! There's no sense in it all. When master goes off on those rounds he ought to give us notice! Well, it's all the same to me; but your dinner will be quite uneatable.'

      'Ah! do you really think so, Rose?' asked a quiet voice just behind her. 'We will eat it, notwithstanding.'

      It was Mouret who had just arrived.[2] Rose turned round, looked her master in the face, and seemed on the point of breaking into some angry exclamation; but at the sight of his unruffled countenance, in which twinkled an expression of merry banter, she could not find a word to say, and so she retired. Mouret made his way to the terrace, where he paced about without sitting down. He just tapped Désirée lightly on the cheek with the tips of his fingers, and the girl greeted him with a responsive smile. Marthe raised her eyes, and when she had glanced at her husband she began to fold up her work.

      'Aren't

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