“‘Oh!  I understand, I understand.  It is very interesting.’

“We returned home.

“The next day, on seeing me, she approached me, cordially holding out her hand; and we at once became firm friends.

“She was a good creature who had a kind of soul on springs, which became enthusiastic at a bound.  She lacked equilibrium like all women who are spinsters at the age of fifty.  She seemed to be preserved in a pickle of innocence, but her heart still retained something very youthful and inflammable.  She loved both nature and animals with a fervor, a love like old wine fermented through age, with a sensuous love that she had never bestowed on men.

“One thing is certain, that the sight of a bitch nursing her puppies, a mare roaming in a meadow with a foal at its side, a bird’s nest full of young ones, screaming, with their open mouths and their enormous heads, affected her perceptibly.

“Poor, solitary, sad, wandering beings!  I love you ever since I became acquainted with Miss Harriet.

“I soon discovered that she had something she would like to tell me, but dare not, and I was amused at her timidity.  When I started out in the morning with my knapsack on my back, she would accompany me in silence as far as the end of the village, evidently struggling to find words with which to begin a conversation.  Then she would leave me abruptly and walk away quickly with her springy step.

“One day, however, she plucked up courage: 

“I would like to see how you paint pictures.  Are you willing?  I have been very curious.’

“And she blushed as if she had said something very audacious.

“I conducted her to the bottom of the Petit-Val, where I had begun a large picture.

“She remained standing behind me, following all my gestures with concentrated attention.  Then, suddenly, fearing perhaps that she was disturbing me, she said:  ‘Thank you,’ and walked away.

“But she soon became more friendly, and accompanied me every day, her countenance exhibiting visible pleasure.  She carried her camp stool under her arm, not permitting me to carry it.  She would remain there for hours, silent and motionless, following with her eyes the point of my brush, in its every movement.  When I obtained unexpectedly just the effect I wanted by a dash of color put on with the palette knife, she involuntarily uttered a little ‘Ah!’ of astonishment, of joy, of admiration.  She had the most tender respect for my canvases, an almost religious respect for that human reproduction of a part of nature’s work divine.  My studies appeared to her a kind of religious pictures, and sometimes she spoke to me of God, with the idea of converting me.

“Oh, he was a queer, good-natured being, this God of hers!  He was a sort of village philosopher without any great resources and without great power, for she always figured him to herself as inconsolable over injustices committed under his eyes, as though he were powerless to prevent them.