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Updated: May 1, 2025
As he went out he met Aunt Lison coming to see her patient. She did not notice that anything extraordinary had happened. No one had told her anything, and, as usual, she had not the slightest idea of what was going on. Rosalie had left the house and the time of Jeanne's confinement was drawing near.
Poulet was almost fifteen, but was a mere child in intelligence, ignorant, silly, suppressed between petticoat government and this kind old man who belonged to another century. One evening the baron spoke of college, and Jeanne at once began to sob. Aunt Lison timidly remained in a dark corner. "Why does he need to know so much?" asked his mother. "We will make a gentleman farmer of him.
No one ever went to her room, and Rosalie, the maid, alone seemed to know where it was situated. If anyone wanted to speak to her a servant was sent to find her, and if she could not be found no one troubled about her, no one thought of her, no one would ever have dreamt of saying: "Dear me! I have not seen Lison this morning."
Aunt Lison was called, and, word by word, they read over this letter which spoke of their loved one, and lingered over every sentence. Jeanne, transported from the deepest despair to a kind of intoxication of joy, began to take Paul's part. "Now he has written, he will come back," she said. "I am sure he will come back."
Twenty times he opened his mouth to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison?" forgetting this white-haired lady who was looking at him tenderly. And yet, there were moments when he no longer felt sure, when he lost his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the woman of long ago.
He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart again, murmuring in her ear: "Good-morning, Lison!" A man-servant announced: "Dinner is ready, madame." And they proceeded toward the dining-room. What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange dreams which border on insanity.
They decided to invite no one to the wedding except Aunt Lison, the baron's sister, who boarded in a convent at Versailles. After the death of their father, the baroness wished to keep her sister with her.
Little by little, however, all the facts came back to her, and then she tried to decide what she had better do. She must have been very ill, or her mother and Aunt Lison and the baron would not have been sent for; but what had Julien said? Did her parents know everything? And where was Rosalie?
Jeanne lamented sometimes over the fleas, and Aunt Lison felt angry with the dog for absorbing so much of the child's affection, affection for which she longed, and which, it seemed to her, this animal had stolen. At long intervals visits were exchanged with the Brisevilles and the Couteliers, but the mayor and the doctor were the only regular visitors at the château.
Twenty times he opened his mouth to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison?" forgetting this white-haired lady who was looking at him tenderly. And yet, there were moments when, he no longer felt sure, when he lost his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the woman of long ago.
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