“Ah! you’re a clever fellow!  You don’t understand, you fool, that if you tire her too much to-day, she won’t be able to do anything to-morrow!”

This argument was decisive.  Rebufat bowed his head, and carried the load which he had desired to set on the young girl’s shoulders.

The latter would have lived in perfect happiness under the secret protection of her aunt Eulalie, but for the teasing of her cousin, who was then a lad of sixteen, and employed his idle hours in hating and persecuting her.  Justin’s happiest moments were those when by means of some gross falsehood he succeeded in getting her scolded.  Whenever he could tread on her feet, or push her roughly, pretending not to have seen her, he laughed and felt the delight of those crafty folks who rejoice at other people’s misfortunes.  Miette, however, would stare at him with her large black childish eyes gleaming with anger and silent scorn, which checked the cowardly youngster’s sneers.  In reality he was terribly afraid of his cousin.

The young girl was just attaining her eleventh year when her aunt Eulalie suddenly died.  From that day everything changed in the house.  Rebufat gradually come to treat her like a farm-labourer.  He overwhelmed her with all sorts of rough work, and made use of her as a beast of burden.  She never even complained, however, thinking that she had a debt of gratitude to repay him.  In the evening, when she was worn out with fatigue, she mourned for her aunt, that terrible woman whose latent kindliness she now realised.  However, it was not the hard work that distressed her, for she delighted in her strength, and took a pride in her big arms and broad shoulders.  What distressed her was her uncle’s distrustful surveillance, his continual reproaches, and the irritated employer-like manner he assumed towards her.  She had now become a stranger in the house.  Yet even a stranger would not have been so badly treated as she was.  Rebufat took the most unscrupulous advantage of this poor little relative, whom he pretended to keep out of charity.  She repaid his harsh hospitality ten times over with her work, and yet never a day passed but he grudged her the bread she ate.  Justin especially excelled in wounding her.  Since his mother had been dead, seeing her without a protector, he had brought all his evil instincts into play in trying to make the house intolerable to her.  The most ingenious torture which he invented was to speak to Miette of her father.  The poor girl, living away from the world, under the protection of her aunt, who had forbidden any one ever to mention the words “galleys” or “convict” before her, hardly understood their meaning.  It was Justin who explained it to her by relating, in his own manner, the story of the murder of the gendarme, and Chantegreil’s conviction.  There was no end to the horrible particulars he supplied:  the convicts had a cannonball fastened to one ankle by a chain, they worked fifteen