Antonia had learned this was the first that she did not suddenly start up in bed, with her eyes immeasurably wide open, and scream for help.
After this first alarm, more than a year passed, and the charwoman recovered her tranquillity and was able to devote herself to her humble labors. One day the butler in one of the houses where she worked thought that he was doing a kindness to the poor, white-faced thing who had a husband in prison, by telling her that there was soon to be an heir to the throne, and that this would undoubtedly mean some more pardons.
The charwoman was in the midst of scrubbing the floor, but on hearing this announcement she dropped her scrubbing-brush and, shaking down her skirt, which had been gathered up around her waist, she left the house, moving like an automaton, as cold and silent as a statue. To all inquiries from her various employers, she replied that she was ill; although, in reality, she was merely suffering from a sort of general prostration, an inability to raise her arms to any work whatever. On the day of the royal birth, she counted the number of salutes, whose reverberations seemed to jar through to the center of her brain; and when someone told her that the royal child was a girl, she began to take heart at the thought that a male child would have been the occasion of a larger number of pardons.
Besides, why should one of the pardons be for her husband? They had already remitted
