Madame Maramballe continued:  “I married him; it is only just and natural that I should bear his injustice; but what I do not understand is why you also should have supported it, my good Alexandre!”

He merely shrugged his shoulders and answered:  “Oh!  I—­madame.”

She added:  “Really.  I have often wondered.  When I married him you were his orderly and you could hardly do otherwise than endure him.  But why did you remain with us, who pay you so little and who treat you so badly, when you could have done as every one else does, settle down, marry, have a family?”

He answered:  “Oh, madame! with me it’s different.”

Then he was silent; but he kept pulling his beard as if he were ringing a bell within him, as if he were trying to pull it out, and he rolled his eyes like a man who is greatly embarrassed.

Madame Maramballe was following her own train of thought:  “You are not a peasant.  You have an education—­”

He interrupted her proudly:  “I studied surveying, madame.”

“Then why did you stay with us, and blast your prospects?”

He stammered:  “That’s it! that’s it! it’s the fault of my dispositton.”

“How so, of your disposition?”

“Yes, when I become attached to a person I become attached to him, that’s all.”

She began to laugh:  “You are not going to try to tell me that Maramballe’s sweet disposition caused you to become attached to him for life.”

He was fidgeting about on his bench visibly embarrassed, and he muttered behind his long beard: 

“It was not he, it was you!”

The old lady, who had a sweet face, with a snowy line of curly white hair between her forehead and her bonnet, turned around in her chair and observed her servant with a surprised look, exclaiming:  “I, my poor Alexandre!  How so?”

He began to look up in the air, then to one side, then toward the distance, turning his head as do timid people when forced to admit shameful secrets.  At last he exclaimed, with the courage of a trooper who is ordered to the line of fire:  “You see, it’s this way—­the first time I brought a letter to mademoiselle from the lieutenant, mademoiselle gave me a franc and a smile, and that settled it.”

Not understanding well, she questioned him “Explain yourself.”

Then he cried out, like a malefactor who is admitting a fatal crime:  “I had a sentiment for madame!  There!”

She answered nothing, stopped looking at him, hung her head, and thought.  She was good, full of justice, gentleness, reason, and tenderness.  In a second she saw the immense devotion of this poor creature, who had given up everything in order to live beside her, without saying anything.  And she felt as if she could cry.  Then, with a sad but not angry expression, she said:  “Let us return home.”

He rose and began to push the wheeled chair.

As they approached the village they saw Captain Maramballe coming toward them.  As soon as he joined them he asked his wife, with a visible desire of getting angry:  “What have we for dinner?”