‘I want to live. To live alone—for a week—for a day. I must explain to them.… I would tear you to pieces, I would kill you twenty times over rather than let you touch me while I live. How many times must I kill you—you blasphemer! Satan sends you here. I am damned too!’

‘Come,’ said Millot, alarmed and conciliating. ‘I am perfectly alive! … Oh, my God!’

She had screamed, ‘Alive!’ and at once vanished before his eyes, as if the islet itself had swerved aside from under her feet. Millot rushed forward, and fell flat with his chin over the edge. Far below he saw the water whitened by her struggles, and heard one shrill cry for help that seemed to dart upwards along the perpendicular face of the rock, and soar past, straight into the high and impassive heaven.

Madame Levaille sat, dry-eyed, on the short grass of the hill side, with her thick legs stretched out, and her old feet turned up in their black cloth shoes. Her clogs stood near by, and further off the umbrella lay on the withered sward like a weapon dropped from the grasp of a vanquished warrior. The Marquis of Chavanes, on horseback, one gloved hand on thigh, looked down at her as she got up laboriously, with groans. On the narrow track of the seaweed-carts four men were carrying inland Susan’s body on a handbarrow, while several others straggled listlessly behind. Madame Levaille looked after the procession. ‘Yes, Monsieur le Marquis,’ she said dispassionately, in her usual calm tone of a reasonable old woman. ‘There are unfortunate people on this earth. I had only one child. Only one! And they won’t bury her in consecrated ground!’

Her eyes filled suddenly, and a short shower of tears rolled down the broad cheeks. She pulled the shawl close about her. The Marquis leaned slightly over in his saddle, and said:

‘It is very sad. You have all my sympathy. I shall speak to the Curé.^* She was unquestionably insane, and the fall was accidental. Millot says so distinctly. Good-day, Madame.’

And he trotted off, thinking to himself: I must get this old woman appointed guardian of those idiots, and administrator of the farm. It would be much better than having here one of those other Bacadous, probably a red republican, corrupting my commune.