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her prayers, and then began the business of dressing,--a business
which henceforth was to have a meaning. First she brushed and smoothed
her chestnut hair and twisted its heavy masses to the top of her head
with the utmost care, preventing the loose tresses from straying, and
giving to her head a symmetry which heightened the timid candor of her
face; for the simplicity of these accessories accorded well with the
innocent sincerity of its lines. As she washed her hands again and
again in the cold water which hardened and reddened the skin, she
looked at her handsome round arms and asked herself what her cousin
did to make his hands so softly white, his nails so delicately curved.
She put on new stockings and her prettiest shoes. She laced her corset
straight, without skipping a single eyelet. And then, wishing for the
first time in her life to appear to advantage, she felt the joy of
having a new gown, well made, which rendered her attractive.
As she finished her toilet the clock of the parish church struck the
hour; to her astonishment, it was only seven. The desire of having
plenty of time for dressing carefully had led her to get up too early.
Ignorant of the art of retouching every curl and studying every
effect, Eugenie simply crossed her arms, sat down by the window, and
looked at the court-yard, the narrow garden, and the high terraced
walls that over-topped it: a dismal, hedged-in prospect, yet not
wholly devoid of those mysterious beauties which belong to solitary or
uncultivated nature. Near the kitchen was a well surrounded by a curb,
with a pulley fastened to a bent iron rod clasped by a vine whose
leaves were withered, reddened, and shrivelled by the season. From
thence the tortuous shoots straggled to the wall, clutched it, and ran
the whole length of the house, ending near the wood-pile, where the
logs were ranged with as much precision as the books in a library. The
pavement of the court-yard showed the black stains produced in time by
lichens, herbage, and the absence of all movement or friction. The
thick walls wore a coating of green moss streaked with waving brown
lines, and the eight stone steps at the bottom of the court-yard which
led up to the gate of the garden were disjointed and hidden beneath
tall plants, like the tomb of a knight buried by his widow in the days
of the Crusades. Above a foundation of moss-grown, crumbling stones
was a trellis of rotten wood, half fallen from decay; over them
clambered and intertwined at will a mass of clustering creepers. On
each side of the latticed gate stretched the crooked arms of two
stunted apple-trees. Three parallel walks, gravelled and separated
from each other by square beds, where the earth was held in by
box-borders, made the garden, which terminated, beneath a terrace of
the old walls, in a group of lindens. At the farther end were
raspberry-bushes; at the other, near the house, an immense walnut-tree
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