Soon after this, mademoiselle was amazed to notice an entire change in
her maid's manner and habits. Germinie no longer had her sullen, savage
moods, her outbreaks of rebellion, her fits of muttering words
expressive of discontent. She suddenly threw off her indolence and
became once more an energetic worker. She no longer passed hours in
doing her marketing; she seemed to avoid the street. She ceased to go
out in the evening; indeed, she hardly stirred from mademoiselle's side,
hovering about her and watching her from the time she rose in the
morning until she went to bed at night, lavishing continuous, incessant,
almost irritating attentions upon her, never allowing her to rise or
even to put out her hand for anything, waiting upon her and keeping
watch of her as if she were a child. At times mademoiselle was so worn
out with her, so weary of this constant fussing about her person, that
she would open her mouth to say: "Come, come! aren't you almost ready to
clear out!" But Germinie would look up at her with a smile, a smile so
sad and sweet that it checked the impatient exclamation on the old
maid's lips. And so she stayed on with her, going about with a sort of
fascinated, divinely stolid air, in the impassibility of profound
adoration, buried in almost idiotic contemplation.
At that period all the poor girl's affection turned to mademoiselle. Her
voice, her gestures, her eyes, her silence, her thoughts, went out to
her mistress with the fervor of expiation, with the contrition of a
prayer, the rapt intensity of a cult. She loved her with all the loving
violence of her nature. She loved her with all the deceptive ardor of
her passion. She strove to give her all that she had not given her, all
that others had taken from her. Every day her love clung more closely,
more devoutly, to the old maid, who was conscious of being enveloped,
embraced, agreeably warmed by the heat from those two arms that were
thrown about her old age.