Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/83

Rh not know whether they are weeping, or laughing with tears in their eyes; whether they are fluttering with pleasure, or twisting in convulsions.

As the journey is long, and the day a full one, they stop towards noon before the principal inn of the market town and unyoke the horses. The blouse-clad workmen throw themselves down on the benches in the big room and smoking dishes are placed before them. But in spite of their sharp appetite and the intoxicating joy of their freedom, which vents itself, the livelong day, in rough challenges of ferocious coarseness addressed to God, the Virgin, and the Saints, they neither omit to clasp together their thick callous hands nor to make twice the sign of the cross.

All the sentiments and sensations connected with these festivities were impressed upon the mind of Blandine by the recollection of one of those memorable days of St. Peter and St. Paul. Although only thirteen years old at that time, she suffered more outrages in her own home than the most wretched servant. Her stepmother, either showing by chance a trace of humanity, or perhaps desiring to humiliate her by confounding