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Updated: June 4, 2025
Once in the lower rooms, she passed through the kitchen to go out into the garden, and again forgot to fasten the shutters. Then she walked rapidly towards the little gate of the Clos-Marie, which she also left wide open after her.
Besides the washerwomen in the Clos, she always saw the same poor, ragged little children playing or sleeping in the grass. The spring this year was unusually mild. She was just sixteen years of age, and until now she had been glad to welcome with her eyes alone the growing green again of the Clos-Marie under the April sunshine.
It was very dark; the Clos-Marie marked itself out like a great black spot under the sky filled with stars, and she could but vaguely distinguish the heavy masses of the old elm-trees of the Bishop's garden, and of the park of the Hotel Voincourt. Alone the window of the chapel sent out a little light. If no one were to come, why did her heart beat so rapidly?
The mere Gabet, now free of her rheumatism, was able to help in the soaping and rinsing. It was a regular fete in the Clos-Marie, these last August days, in which the weather was splendid, the sky almost cloudless, while a delicious fragrance came up from the Chevrotte, the water of which as it passed under the willows was almost icy cold.
From that date, each time that Angelique opened her window she saw Felicien over there in the Clos-Marie. He passed days in the field, having the chapel window as an excuse for doing so, on which, however, the work did not advance the least in the world. For hours he would forget himself behind a cluster of bushes, where, stretched out on the grass, he watched through the leaves.
A woman was hired to aid them, the Mother Gabet, as she was called, and for four days all embroidery was laid aside, while Angelique took her part in the unusual work, making of it a perfect amusement, as she soaped and rinsed the clothes in the clean water of the Chevrotte. The linen when taken from the ashes was wheeled to the Clos-Marie, through the little gate of communication in the garden.
And in the dark, motionless, living mass, her looks were sure to seek the window of a chapel of the choir, on the level of the bushes of the Clos-Marie, the only one which was lighted up, and which seemed like an eye which was kept open all the night. Behind it, at the corner of a pillar, was an ever-burning altar-lamp.
It is the whole Clos-Marie that encourages me not to spoil my life and yours by giving myself to you without the consent of your father. This singing voice is the Chevrotte, so clear and so fresh that it seems to have put within me a purity like crystal since I have lived so near it.
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