Little Pierre . avedone, said my mother, but you may read them intheir eyes. Be good and they will smile upon you,they and all Nature with them. Since then, every time we passed by the two sis-ters, my mother and I, we scanned them anxiously,to see whether their faces were wrathful or serene,and always their expression corresponded exactlywith the state of my conscience. I consulted themin the fullness of faith, and found in their counte-nance, whether smiling or sombre, the recompenseof my good behaviour, or the penalty of my mis-deeds. Long years slipped by. Having attained to mansestate and
Little Pierre . avedone, said my mother, but you may read them intheir eyes. Be good and they will smile upon you,they and all Nature with them. Since then, every time we passed by the two sis-ters, my mother and I, we scanned them anxiously,to see whether their faces were wrathful or serene,and always their expression corresponded exactlywith the state of my conscience. I consulted themin the fullness of faith, and found in their counte-nance, whether smiling or sombre, the recompenseof my good behaviour, or the penalty of my mis-deeds. Long years slipped by. Having attained to mansestate and complete intellectual emancipation, I still LITTLE PIERRE 95 used to consult the two sisters in hours of perplexityand irresolution. One day, when I had a special needto read clearly within my heart, I went to ask themfor guidance. They were no longer to be had disappeared, together with the door thatthey adorned. I departed filled with doubt andhesitation, and forthwith committed an error CHAPTER XIII CATHERINE AND MARIANNE HE sea, when I saw it for the firsttime, only impressed me with itsvastness by reason of the infinitesadness which it brought into myheart as I gazed upon it andbreathed its salt savour. It was thesea, wild and untamed. We had come to spend oneof the summer months at a little village in Brittany,and one aspect of the coast is graven, as-though withan etchers needle, on my memory, and that was thesight of a row of trees beaten by the sea wind andstretching, beneath a lowering sky, their bowedtrunks and withered branches towards the flat, bar-ren soil. It was a sight that ate itself into my heart. Itlingers with me as the symbol of some unparalleledmisfortune. The sounds and scents of the sea haunted andtroubled me. Every day and every hour, the seaseemed to me to undergo a change, now sleek andblue, now overspread with tiny, gentle wavelets, blueon one side, silvery on the other, now seemingly hid-den beneath a sheet of polished green
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