156
PARTISAN REVIEW
as it should be"; he sniffled, then wiped a drop from the end of
his
nose with his sleeve. In the noblest part of the little servant, in the
part that refused to give way to grief, at the top of her soul, a nervous
voice, growing impatient, kept saying: "Keep qui-et, keep very qui-et."
But the poor little servant herself heard no more than a whispered
sound, and was unable to understand its meaning. Just as one draws
a shawl around one's shoulders, so, with ungainly hands cracked by
much soap and water, she drew her mistress' black mourning veil
close to her body. She walked quietly, in silence.
"I am walking ever so quietly, and on the king's own flower–
beds."
Because of her poverty, the wretchedness of her wages, she had
to wear rubber-soled shoes. In the blank white room, where the
electric bulb had been placed high up in one comer, the sprawling
shadow of the little servant, clad in deep mourning, spread its length
from the ceiling downward on the wall opposite. The little coffin,
into which they had put her baby
girl,
stood on a rather low trestle,
painted black.
"She is asleep, the little dear."
The silence about her was such that she could hear the croaking
of the frogs as they jumped and dived in the waters of the foggy
swamp which they had not yet abandoned.
Over the coffin was spread a white sheet, on which the nurses
had placed the little star made of blue and white beaded flowers sent
by her mistress the day before. Above the flowers a chubby little
angel, made of pink porcelain, bobbed tremulously at the end of a
wire. The little servant muttered a brief "Hail, Mary," then leaned
against the wall, the more easily to await the priest. He came. Once
they reached the church, the funeral party had to stand aside and
wait until last rites had been said for eleven German soldiers killed
the day before. They had to wait three hours. Juliette had not been
able to sit down.
"People will think I don't feel any grief," she thought.
"People will think I didn't love my little baby."
"For all I know, they
will
say I killed her."
The small squadron of soldiers who had accompanied their dead
comrades to the church looked at the poor little figure in mourning,
standing near the ropes dangling through a hole in the belfry. Finally
the eleven coffins were removed and taken off to the station, to be
put to rest on the other side of the Rhine.
The time spent in the church for absolution was short. The
