Benassis pressed his knees against his horse’s sides, and swept ahead of Commandant Genestas, as if he shrank from continuing this conversation any further.  When their horses were once more cantering abreast of each other, he spoke again:  “Nature has created this poor girl for sorrow,” he said, “as she has created other women for joy.  It is impossible to do otherwise than believe in a future life at the sight of natures thus predestined to suffer.  La Fosseuse is sensitive and highly strung.  If the weather is dark and cloudy, she is depressed; she ‘weeps when the sky is weeping,’ a phrase of her own; she sings with the birds; she grows happy and serene under a cloudless sky; the loveliness of a bright day passes into her face; a soft sweet perfume is an inexhaustible pleasure to her; I have seen her take delight the whole day long in the scent breathed forth by some mignonette; and, after one of those rainy mornings that bring out all the soul of the flowers and give indescribable freshness and brightness to the day, she seems to overflow with gladness like the green world around her.  If it is close and hot, and there is thunder in the air, La Fosseuse feels a vague trouble that nothing can soothe.  She lies on her bed, complains of numberless different ills, and does not know what ails her.  In answer to my questions, she tells me that her bones are melting, that she is dissolving into water; her ’heart has left her,’ to quote another of her sayings.

“I have sometimes come upon the poor child suddenly and found her in tears, as she gazed at the sunset effects we sometimes see here among our mountains, when bright masses of cloud gather and crowd together and pile themselves above the golden peaks of the hills.  ’Why are you crying, little one?’ I have asked her.  ‘I do not know, sir,’ has been the answer; ’I have grown so stupid with looking up there; I have looked and looked, till I hardly know where I am.’  ’But what do you see there?’ ‘I cannot tell you, sir,’ and you might question her in this way all the evening, yet you would never draw a word from her; but she would look at you, and every glance would seem full of thoughts, or she would sit with tears in her eyes, scarcely saying a word, apparently rapt in musing.  Those musings of hers are so profound that you fall under the spell of them; on me, at least, she has the effect of a cloud overcharged with electricity.  One day I plied her with questions; I tried with all my might to make her talk; at last I let fall a few rather hasty words; and, well—­she burst into tears.

“At other times La Fosseuse is bright and winning, active, merry, and sprightly; she enjoys talking, and the ideas which she expresses are fresh and original.  She is however quite unable to apply herself steadily to any kind of work.  When she was out in the fields she used to spend whole hours in looking at a flower, in watching the water flow, in gazing at the wonders in the depths of the clear, still river pools, at the picturesque mosaic made up of pebbles and earth and sand, of water plants and green moss, and the brown soil washed down by the stream, a deposit full of soft shades of color, and of hues that contrast strangely with each other.