and the necessity for order. She let her children grow up like those
plum-trees which sprout along the highways at the pleasure of the rain
and sun. They bore their natural fruits like wild stock which has never
known grafting or pruning. Never was nature allowed such complete sway,
never did such mischievous creatures grow up more freely under the sole
influence of instinct. They rolled among the vegetables, passed their
days in the open air playing and fighting like good-for-nothing urchins.
They stole provisions from the house and pillaged the few fruit-trees in
the enclosure; they were the plundering, squalling, familiar demons of
this strange abode of lucid insanity. When their mother was absent
for days together, they would make such an uproar, and hit upon such
diabolical devices for annoying people, that the neighbours had to
threaten them with a whipping. Moreover, Adelaide did not inspire them
with much fear; if they were less obnoxious to other people when she was
at home, it was because they made her their victim, shirking school
five or six times a week and doing everything they could to receive some
punishment which would allow them to squall to their hearts' content.
But she never beat them, nor even lost her temper; she lived on very
well, placidly, indolently, in a state of mental abstraction amidst all
the uproar. At last, indeed, this uproar became indispensable to her,
to fill the void in her brain. She smiled complacently when she heard
anyone say, "Her children will beat her some day, and it will serve her
right." To all remarks, her utter indifference seemed to reply, "What
does it matter?" She troubled even less about her property than about
her children. The Fouques' enclosure, during the many years that this
singular existence lasted would have become a piece of waste ground
if the young woman had not luckily entrusted the cultivation of her
vegetables to a clever market-gardener. This man, who was to share the
profits with her, robbed her impudently, though she never noticed it.
This circumstance had its advantages, however; for, in order to steal