She had been born in the Berceau de Dieu; had lived there and wedded there; had toiled there all her life, and never left it for a greater distance than a league or a longer time than a day.
She loved it with an intense love: the world beyond it was nothing to her: she scarcely believed in it as existing. She could neither read nor write. She told the truth, reared her offspring in honesty, and praised God always—had praised Him when starving in a bitter winter after her husband's death, when there had been no field-work, and she had had five children to feed and clothe; and still praised Him now that her sons were all dead before her, and all she had living of her blood was her grandson Bernadou.
Her life had been a hard one.
Her parents had been hideously poor. Her marriage had scarcely bettered her condition. She had laboured in the fields always, hoeing and weeding, and reaping, and carrying wood, and driving mules, and continually rising with the first streak of the daybreak. She had known fever and famine, and all manner of earthly ills. But now in her old age she had peace.
Two of her dead sons, who had sought their fortunes in the other hemisphere, had left her a little money, and she had a little cottage and
