HE coming of Marie was like the entrance of death into the house. At the very first sight of her, Madame Bergeret knew that her day was over.  
Euphémie sat for a long while on her caneless chair, silent and motionless, but with flushed cheeks. Her deep-rooted attachment to her employers and her employers’ house was instinctive, but sure, and, like a dog’s love, not dependent on reason. She shed no tears, but fever spots came out on her lips. Her good-bye to Madame Bergeret was said with all the solemnity of a pious, countrified heart. During the five years of her service in the house she had endured at Madame Bergeret’s hands, not only abusive violence, but hard avarice, for she was fed but meagrely; on her side, she had given way to fits of insolence and disobedience, and she had slandered her mistress among the other servants. But she was a Christian, and at the bottom of her257 heart she revered her pastors and masters as she did her father and mother. Snivelling with grief, she said:
 
“Good-bye, Madame. I will pray to the good God for you, that He may make you happy. I wish I could have said good-bye to the young ladies.”
 
Madame Bergeret knew that she was being hunted out of the house, like this young girl, but she would not show how moved she was, for fear of seeming undignified.
 
“Go, child,” said she, “and settle your wages with Monsieur.”
 
When M. Bergeret handed her her wages, she slowly counted out the amount and moving her lips as though in prayer, made her calculations three times over. She examined the coins anxiously, not being sure of her bearings among so many different varieties. Then she put this little property, her sole wealth in all the world, into the pocket of her skirt, under her handkerchief. Next she dug her hand deep into her pocket, and having taken all these precautions, said:
 
“You have always been good to me, Monsieur, and I wish you every happiness. But, all the same, you have driven me away.”
 
“You think I am a wicked man,” answered M. Bergeret. “But if I send you away, my good258 girl, I do it regretfully and only because it is absolutely necessary. If I can help you in any way, I shall be very glad to do so.”
 
Euphémie passed the back of her hand over her eyes, sniffed aloud and said softly, with big tears flowing down her cheeks:
 
“There’s nobody wicked here.”
 
She went out, closing the door behind her as noiselessly as possible, and M. Bergeret began to picture her standing at the bottom of the waiting-room in Deniseau’s office, with anxious looks fixed on the door, among the melancholy crowd of girls waiting to be hired, in her white head-dress with her blue cotton umbrella stuck between her knees.
 
Meanwhile Marie, the stable-girl, who had never in her life waited on anything but beasts, was filled with amazement and stupefaction at the ways of these townsfolk, till the terror that she communicated to others began to overwhelm her own mind. She squatted in her kitchen and gazed at the saucepans. Bacon soup was the only thing she could make and dialect the only language she understood. She was not even well recommended, for it turned out that she had not only lived loosely, but was in the habit of drinking brandy and even spirits of wine.
 
The first visitor to whom she opened the door was Captain Aspertini, who, in passing through the259 town, had called to see M. Bergeret. She evidently made a deep impression on the Italian savant’s mind, for no sooner had he greeted his host than he began to speak of the maid with that interest which ugliness always inspires when it is overwhelmingly terrible.
 
“Your maid, Monsieur Bergeret,” said he, “reminds me of that expressive face which Giotto has painted on an arch of the church at Assisi. It represents that Being to whom no one ever opens the door with a smile, and was suggested by a verse in Dante.
 
“That reminds me,” continued the Italian; “have you seen the portrait of Virgil in mosaic that your compatriots have just discovered at Sousse in Algeria? It is a picture of a Roman with a wide, low forehead, a square head and a strong jaw, and is not in the least like the beautiful youth whom they used to tell us was Virgil. The bust which for a long time was taken for a portrait of the poet is really a Roman copy of a Greek original of the fourth century and represents a young god worshipped in the mysteries of Eleusis. I think I may claim the honour of being the first to give the true explanation of this figure in my pamphlet on the child Triptolemus. But do you know this Virgil in mosaic, Monsieur Bergeret?”
 
260 “As well as I can judge from the photograph I have seen,” answered M. Bergeret, “this African mosaic seems the copy of an original full of character. This portrait might quite stand for Virgil, and it is by no means impossible that it is an authentic portrait of him. Your Renaissance scholars, Monsieur Aspertini, always depicted the author of the ?neid with the features of a sage. The old Venetian editions of Dante that I have turned over in our library are full of wood engravings in which Virgil wears the beard of a philosopher. The next age made him as beautiful as a young god. Now we have him with a square jaw and wearing a fringe of hair across his forehead in the Roman style. The mental effect produced by his work has varied just as much. Every literary age creates pictures from it which are entirely different according to the period. And without recalling the legends of the Middle Ages about Virgil the necromancer, it is a fact that the Mantuan is admired for reasons that change according to the period. In him Macrobius hailed the Sibyl of the Empire. It was his philosophy that Dante a............