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Jean-Christophe Journey's End by Romain Rolland
page 278 of 655 (42%)
He put up with it apathetically and sleepily: he preferred not to run
the risk of rousing the tempestuous ire of his terrible niece: it was
impossible to fight against such a wagging tongue: he desired peace
above all things. Only once did he lose his temper, and that was when a
little Saint Joseph made a surreptitious attempt to creep into his room
and take up his stand above his bed: on this point he gained the day:
for he came very near to having an apoplectic fit, and his niece was
frightened: she did not try the experiment again. For the rest he gave
in, and pretended not to see: the odor of sanctity made him feel very
uncomfortable: but he tried not to think of it. On the other hand they
were at one in pampering the girl, little Reine, or Rainette.

She was twelve or thirteen, and was always ill. For some months past she
had been on her back with hip disease, with the whole of one side of her
body done up in plaster of Paris like a little Daphne in her shell. She
had eyes like a hurt dog's, and her skin was pallid and pale like a
plant grown out of the sun: her head was too big for her body, and her
fair hair, which was very soft and very tightly drawn back, made it
appear even bigger: but she had an expressive and sweet face, a sharp
little nose, and a childlike expression. The mother's piety had assumed
in the child, in her sickness and lack of interest, a fervid character.
She used to spend hours in telling her beads, a string of corals,
blessed by the Pope: and she would break off in her prayers to kiss it
passionately. She did next to nothing all day long: needlework made her
tired: Madame Alexandrine had not given her a taste for it. She did
little more than read a few insipid tracts, or a stupid miraculous
story, the pretentious and bald style of which seemed to her the very
flower of poetry,--or the criminal reports illustrated in color in the
Sunday papers which her stupid mother used to give her. She would
perhaps do a little crochet-work, moving her lips, and paying less
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