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Updated: June 14, 2025
"It was your brother who made me," said La Pechina, remembering Nicolas. "My brother? I did not see him," said Catherine. "What did he do to you, poor fellow, that should make you fly as if he were a wolf? Isn't he handsomer than your Monsieur Michaud?" "Oh!" said the girl, contemptuously. "See here, little one; you are laying up a crop of evils for yourself by loving those who persecute us.
All the lower part of the face, like the lower part of the nose, seemed unfinished, as if the clay in the hands of the divine sculptor had proved insufficient. Between the lower lip and the chin the space was so short that any one taking La Pechina by the chin would have rubbed the lip; but the teeth prevented all notice of this defect.
During this conversation Nicolas, choosing the grassy spots to step on, had noiselessly slipped behind the trunk of an old oak near which his sister had seated La Pechina. Catherine, who had now and then cast her eyes behind her, saw her brother as she turned to get the boiled wine. "Here, take some," she said, offering it.
"Pechina!" said the countess, "whom do you mean?" "Madame la comtesse, when you met little Genevieve on the road in a miserable condition, you cried out in Italian, 'Piccina! The word became a nickname, and is now corrupted all through the district into Pechina," said the abbe. "The poor girl comes to church with Madame Michaud and Madame Sibilet."
Come to the fair this year!" "They say it's fine, that Soulanges fair!" cried La Pechina, artlessly. "I'll tell you what it is in two words," said Catherine. "If you are handsome, you are well ogled. What is the good of being as pretty as you are if you are not admired by the men? Ha! when I heard one of them say for the first time, 'What a fine sprig of a girl! all my blood was on fire.
For the last three days he had been watching La Pechina, and the poor child knew she was watched. Between Nicolas and his prey the same sort of understanding existed which there is between the hunter and the game. When the girl was at some little distance from the pavilion she saw Nicolas in one of the paths which ran parallel to the walls of the park, leading to the bridge of the Avonne.
When La Pechina started with the milk which Madame Michaud had sent to the daughter of Gaillard, the keeper of the gate of Conches, whose cow had just calved, she looked about her cautiously, like a cat when it ventures out onto the street. She saw no signs of Nicolas; she listened to the silence, as the poet says, and hearing nothing, she concluded that the rascal had gone to his day's work.
"I should be afraid to drink boiled wine at a dance," said La Pechina. "Afraid of what?" asked Catherine. "There's not the slightest danger. Think what lots of people there will be. All the bourgeois will be looking at us! Ah! it is one of those days that make up for all our misery. See it and die, for it's enough to satisfy any one."
La Pechina uttered piercing screams, which Catherine tried to choke by putting her hands over the girl's mouth, but she bit them and drew blood. It was at this moment that Blondet, the countess, and the abbe appeared at the edge of the wood. "Here are those Aigues people!" exclaimed Catherine, helping Genevieve to rise. "Do you want to live?" hissed Nicolas in the child's ear.
To dance before Michaud, to shine at the Soulanges ball and inscribe herself on the memory of that adored master! What glorious thoughts! To fling them into that volcanic head was like casting live coals upon straw dried in the August sun. "No, Catherine," replied La Pechina, "I am ugly and puny; my lot is to sit in a corner and never to be married, but live alone in the world."
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