his whole ambition was to become a great preacher—turned to them all and pointed at Marie. 'Here is the one who caused this respected woman's death' (which wasn't true, because she had been sick for two years), 'here she stands before you and dares not look up, because she is marked by the finger of God; here she is, barefoot and in rags—an example to those who lose their virtue! Who is she? She is her own daughter!' and more in the same vein. And imagine, almost everyone there liked this meanness, but . . . here a peculiar thing occurred; here the children stepped in, because by then the children were all on my side and had begun to love Marie. This is how it happened. I wanted to do something for Marie; she badly needed money, but I never had a penny while I was there. I had a small diamond pin, and I sold it to a certain peddler: he went from village to village trading in old clothes. He gave me eight francs, though it was worth a good forty. I spent a long time trying to meet Marie alone; we finally met outside the village, by a hedge, on a side path to the mountain, behind a tree. There I gave her the eight francs and told her to be sparing of them, because I wouldn't have more, and then I kissed her and said she shouldn't think I had any bad intentions, and that I had kissed her not because I was in love with her but because I felt very sorry for her, and that from the very start I had never regarded her as guilty but only as unfortunate. I wanted very much to comfort her right then and to assure her that she shouldn't regard herself as so low before everyone, but she didn't seem to understand. I noticed it at once, though she was silent almost all the while and stood before me looking down and terribly embarrassed. When I finished, she kissed my hand, and I took her hand at once and wanted to kiss it, but she quickly pulled it back. Just then the children suddenly spied us, a whole crowd of them; I learned later that they had been spying on me for a long time. They began to whistle, clap their hands, and laugh, and Marie ran away. I wanted to speak to them, but they started throwing stones at me. That same day everybody knew about it, the entire village; it all fell on Marie again: they now disliked her still more. I even heard that they wanted to condemn her and punish her, but, thank God, it blew over. The children, however, wouldn't let her alone, teased her worse than before, threw mud at her; they chased her, she ran away from them with her weak chest, gasping for breath; they kept at it, shouting, abusing her. Once I even picked a fight with them. Then I started talking with them, talking every day, whenever I had a chance.
They sometimes stood and listened, though they kept up their abuse. I told them how unfortunate Marie was; soon they stopped abusing me and would silently walk away. We gradually began to talk. I didn't hide anything from them, I told them everything. They listened very curiously and soon started to feel sorry for Marie. Some started greeting her kindly when they met; the custom there, when you met someone, whether you knew them or not, was to bow and say: 'Good day.' I can imagine how surprised Marie was. Once two girls got some food and brought it to her, gave it to her, then came and told me. They said Marie burst into tears and now they loved her very much. Soon they all began to love her, and at the same time they began to love me as well. They started coming to see me often, asking me to tell them stories; it seems I did it well, because they liked listening to me very much. And later I studied and read everything only so as to tell them afterwards, and for three years after that I told them all sorts of things. When everybody accused me afterwards—Schneider, too— of talking to them like grown-ups, without hiding anything, I replied that it was shameful to lie to them, they knew everything anyway, no matter how you hid it, and might learn it in a bad way, while from me it wouldn't be in a bad way. You only had to remember yourself as a child. They didn't agree ... I kissed Marie two weeks before her mother died; when the pastor gave his sermon, all the children were already on my side. I told them about it at once and explained the pastor's action; they all became angry with him, some so much that they sent stones through the pastor's windows. I stopped them, because that was a bad thing; but everyone in the village learned all about it at once, and here they began to accuse me of having corrupted the children. Then they found out that the children loved Marie and became terribly frightened; but Marie was happy now. The children were even forbidden to meet her, but they ran in secret to see her with her herd, quite far, almost half a mile from the village; they brought her treats, and some simply ran there to embrace her and kiss her, saying: 'Je vous aime, Marie!' and then rushed headlong home. Marie almost lost her mind from this sudden happiness; she had never dreamed of anything like it; she was embarrassed and joyful, and the children, especially the girls, wanted above all to run to her and tell her that I loved her and had told them a lot about her. They told her that they knew everything from me, and that now they loved and pitied her and always would. Then they came running to me and with
such joyful, concerned little faces told me that they had just seen Marie and that Marie sent her greetings. In the evenings I used to go to the waterfall; there was one place completely screened off on the village side, with poplars growing around it; that was where they would gather with me in the evening, some even in secret. It seemed to me that my love for Marie delighted them terribly, and that was the one thing, during all my life there, in which I deceived them. I didn't disappoint them by confessing that I did not love Marie at all—that is, was not in love with her—but only pitied her; everything told me that they preferred it the way they had imagined and decided it among themselves, and so I said nothing and pretended they had guessed right. And those little hearts were so delicate and tender: among other things, it seemed impossible to them that their good Léon should love Marie so much, while Marie was so poorly dressed and had no shoes. Imagine, they even got shoes and stockings and linen for her, and even some sort of dress. How they managed it I don't know; the whole band worked on it. When I asked them, they only laughed merrily, and the little girls clapped their hands and kissed me. I, too, occasionally went in secret to see Marie. She was becoming very ill and could barely walk; in the end she stopped helping the cowherd altogether; but even so she left with the herd each morning. She sat to one side. There was a sheer, almost vertical cliff there, with a ledge; she would sit on a stone in a corner that was shielded from everyone and spend the whole day almost without moving, from morning till it was time for the herd to go. By then she was so weak from consumption that she mostly sat with her eyes closed, leaning her head against the rock, and dozed, breathing heavily; her face was thin as a skeleton's, and sweat stood out on her forehead and temples. That was how I always found her. I'd come for a minute, and I also didn't want to be seen. As soon as I appeared, Marie would give a start, open her eyes, and rush to kiss my hands. I no longer withdrew them, because for her it was happiness; all the while I sat there, she trembled and wept; true, she tried several times to speak, but it was hard to understand her. She was like a crazy person, in terrible agitation and rapture. Sometimes the children came with me. On those occasions, they usually stood not far away and set about guarding us from something or someone, and they were extraordinarily pleased with that. When we left, Marie again remained alone, motionless as before, her eyes closed and her head leaning against the rock; she may have been dreaming of