“I should like to find a husband for my Fosseuse.  I should be glad to make over one of my farms to some good fellow who would make her happy.  And she would be happy.  The poor girl would love her children to distraction; for motherhood, which develops the whole of a woman’s nature, would give full scope to her overflowing sentiments.  She has never cared for any one, however.  Yet her impressionable nature is a danger to her.  She knows this herself, and when she saw that I recognized it, she admitted the excitability of her temperament to me.  She belongs to the small minority of women whom the slightest contact with others causes to vibrate perilously; so that she must be made to value herself on her discretion and her womanly pride.  She is as wild and shy as a swallow!  Ah! what a wealth of kindness there is in her!  Nature meant her to be a rich woman; she would be so beneficent:  for a well-loved woman; she would be so faithful and true.  She is only twenty-two years old, and is sinking already beneath the weight of her soul; a victim to highly-strung nerves, to an organization either too delicate or too full of power.  A passionate love for a faithless lover would drive her mad, my poor Fosseuse!  I have made a study of her temperament, recognized the reality of her prolonged nervous attacks, and of the swift mysterious recurrence of her uplifted moods.  I found that they were immediately dependent on atmospheric changes and on the variations of the moon, a fact which I have carefully verified; and since then I have cared for her, as a creature unlike all others, for she is a being whose ailing existence I alone can understand.  As I have told you, she is the pet lamb.  But you shall see her; this is her cottage.”

They had come about one-third of the way up the mountain side.  Low bushes grew on either hand along the steep paths which they were ascending at a foot pace.  At last, at a turn in one of the paths, Genestas saw La Fosseuse’s dwelling, which stood on one of the largest knolls on the mountain.  Around it was a green sloping space of lawn about three acres in extent, planted with trees, and surrounded by a wall high enough to serve as a fence, but not so high as to shut out the view of the landscape.  Several rivulets that had their source in this garden formed little cascades among the trees.  The brick-built cottage with a low roof that projected several feet was a charming detail in the landscape.  It consisted of a ground floor and a single story, and stood facing the south.  All the windows were in the front of the house, for its small size and lack of depth from back to front made other openings unnecessary.  The doors and shutters were painted green, and the underside of the penthouses had been lined with deal boards in the German fashion, and painted white.  The rustic charm of the whole little dwelling lay in its spotless cleanliness.