“The stable boy, who was called Sapeur, because he had served in Africa in his youth, entertained other opinions.  He said with a roguish air:  ‘She is an old hag who has seen life.’

“If the poor woman had but known!

“The little kind-hearted Celeste did not wait upon her willingly, but I was never able to understand why.  Probably her only reason was that she was a stranger, of another race; of a different tongue and of another religion.  She was, in fact, a demoniac!

“She passed her time wandering about the country, adoring and seeking God in nature.  I found her one evening on her knees in a cluster of bushes.  Having discovered something red through the leaves, I brushed aside the branches, and Miss Harriet at once rose to her feet, confused at having been found thus, fixing on me terrified eyes like those of an owl surprised in open day.

“Sometimes, when I was working among the rocks, I would suddenly descry her on the edge of the cliff like a lighthouse signal.  She would be gazing in rapture at the vast sea glittering in the sunlight and the boundless sky with its golden tints.  Sometimes I would distinguish her at the end of the valley, walking quickly with her elastic English step, and I would go toward her, attracted by I know not what, simply to see her illuminated visage, her dried-up, ineffable features, which seemed to glow with inward and profound happiness.

“I would often encounter her also in the corner of a field, sitting on the grass under the shadow of an apple tree, with her little religious booklet lying open on her knee while she gazed out at the distance.

“I could not tear myself away from that quiet country neighborhood, to which I was attached by a thousand links of love for its wide and peaceful landscape.  I was happy in this sequestered farm, far removed from everything, but in touch with the earth, the good, beautiful, green earth.  And—­must I avow it?—­there was, besides, a little curiosity which retained me at the residence of Mother Lecacheur.  I wished to become acquainted a little with this strange Miss Harriet and to know what transpires in the solitary souls of those wandering old English women.

“We became acquainted in a rather singular manner.  I had just finished a study which appeared to me to be worth something, and so it was, as it sold for ten thousand francs fifteen years later.  It was as simple, however, as two and two make four and was not according to academic rules.  The whole right side of my canvas represented a rock, an enormous rock, covered with sea-wrack, brown, yellow and red, across which the sun poured like a stream of oil.  The light fell upon the rock as though it were aflame without the sun, which was at my back, being visible.  That was all.  A first bewildering study of blazing, gorgeous light.

“On the left was the sea, not the blue sea, the slate-colored sea, but a sea of jade, greenish, milky and solid beneath the deep-colored sky.