And I've been dreaming
that my poor Octave had come back to life, and was trying to make me take
a walk every day!" She stretched out a hand towards her rosary, which was
lying on the small table, but sleep was once again getting the mastery,
and did not leave her the strength to reach it; she fell asleep, calm and
contented, and I crept out of the room on tiptoe, without either her or
anyone's else ever knowing, from that day to this, what I had seen and
heard.
When I say that, apart from such rare happenings as this confinement, my
aunt's 'little jog-trot' never underwent any variation, I do not include
those variations which, repeated at regular intervals and in identical
form, did no more, really, than print a sort of uniform pattern upon the
greater uniformity of her life. So, for instance, every Saturday, as
Francoise had to go in the afternoon to market at Roussainville-le-Pin,
the whole household would have to have luncheon an hour earlier. And my
aunt had so thoroughly acquired the habit of this weekly exception to her
general habits, that she clung to it as much as to the rest. She was so
well 'routined' to it, as Francoise would say, that if, on a Saturday, she
had had to wait for her luncheon until the regular hour, it would have
'upset' her as much as if she had had, on an ordinary day, to put her
luncheon forward to its Saturday time.
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