ClassicNovels

Two Little Wooden Shoes guide

Ouida, 1874 · Begin reading

Summary

Bébée is an orphan rescued from the water as a baby and raised by Antoine Mäes and his wife near Brussels. At sixteen, with her guardians dead, she chooses to keep her cottage and support herself by growing and selling flowers and making lace. Hardworking, generous, and loved by her neighbors, she is happy but eager to learn about the world beyond her village.

Her life changes when she meets Victor Flamen, a wealthy, celebrated French painter staying in Brussels. He wants to paint her as Gretchen and initially intends to seduce and abandon her. He gives her silk stockings and books, encourages her affection, and awakens desires her familiar life cannot satisfy. Jeannot, who cares for her, warns her against him, but Bébée trusts Flamen and believes that learning will make her worthy of his love.

Flamen takes her into the forest, paints her, and offers her a luxurious life with him. Her innocence and religious trust repeatedly stop him from carrying out his intended seduction. Nevertheless, he asks her to conceal their meetings and lets her believe that his love is lasting. When he announces his departure for Paris, Bébée desperately begs him to return. He promises, although he has no intention of keeping his word. He leaves persuaded that she will eventually marry Jeannot, while he returns to his former pleasures and looks forward to the reception of his painting.

Bébée waits through autumn and winter. She works, studies, and sacrifices meals to buy books, hoping to please Flamen when he returns. She becomes thin, exhausted, and withdrawn. Her neighbors mistake her suffering for evidence of wrongdoing and increasingly avoid her. Annémie, the elderly woman Bébée helps, dies still expecting the sailor she has awaited for decades. Bébée fears such endless waiting but continues to trust Flamen.

Hearing that Flamen is dying in Paris, Bébée leaves to nurse him. Unable to afford the train, she offers her silver buckles for the fare, only to have them stolen. When she finally reaches him, she discovers him healthy, playing cards among laughing guests while another woman embraces him. Her hope collapses. She flees toward the river and wishes to die, but Jeannot saves her and brings her home to Brabant.

The neighbors regret their harshness and care for Bébée, who lies silent and unresponsive. Their kindness cannot restore her. She later returns to the familiar water and drowns herself while thinking of Flamen with the other woman. Jeannot survives, having rescued her once but unable to prevent her death. Flamen's messengers bring him a dead rose and her worn wooden shoes. He keeps them as reminders that she loved him.

The ending

Jeannot rescues Bébée in Paris after she discovers that Flamen is healthy and enjoying another woman's company. He brings her home, where her repentant neighbors care for her, but she later drowns herself. Flamen receives a dead rose and her worn wooden shoes and keeps them as reminders of her love.

Characters

Also appearing

  • God
  • Marthe, the carpenter's wife
  • Christine
  • Jeanne
  • Jules
  • Gran'mère Bishot
  • Père Melchior
  • Rubes
  • Lisa Dredel
  • Bac
  • Gretchen
  • Scheffer
  • Franz
  • Mère Dax
  • Marie
  • Doctor Max

Chapter by chapter

Chapter 1

Bébée wakes on her sixteenth birthday in the cottage where Antoine Mäes and his wife raised her after Antoine rescued her from the water as a baby. After Antoine's death, Bébée insists on living alone and supporting herself by selling flowers. Father Francis questions her decision, but Bébée keeps her home and work with her neighbors' goodwill.

Chapter 2

Bébée supports herself by gardening and selling flowers in summer and making lace in winter. Turning sixteen finds her hardworking and happy, with thoughts that reach beyond her familiar life. She continues selling flowers in the Brussels square among people who know her, while the tinker and cobbler wonder what occupies her thoughts.

Chapter 3

Bébée receives gifts from her market friends and earns fifty sous selling flowers on her feast day. An unnamed stranger walks with her and discusses her wish for stockings, but Bébée tells him to leave because he is delaying her journey home. He says he will see her tomorrow, then joins companions at a café and drops and tramples her roses.

Chapter 4

Bébée returns home and shares her sweets, cherries, and cake with the waiting children. Krebs plays his fiddle as Bébée and the children dance, then sing together while the neighbors gather. Bébée goes to bed happy with her friends, her gifts, and her life at sixteen.

Chapter 5

Bébée gives up saving for stockings because the Varnhart children need help, then finds two pairs of silk stockings on her market chair. The stranger's remarks make Bébée ashamed of her bare feet and worried that she has seemed ungrateful. She works late in her garden, goes without supper, and sleeps badly while remembering his reproachful eyes.

Chapter 6

Bébée sells flowers successfully but spends the day watching for the absent stranger and saving a rose for him. After market, she visits Annémie and collects lace patterns, leaving the old woman watching for the man she lost sixty years earlier. Walking home, Bébée wonders what such love feels like and finds that the rose she saved has died.

Chapter 7

Bébée meets the painter on her way home, and he walks with her while she explains her work for Annémie. Seeing Jeannot makes the painter reluctant to leave Bébée to her ordinary life, and he promises to bring her a book. Bébée works late and sings happily, though she regrets the pear blossoms he knocked down.

Chapter 8

Jeannot visits Bébée at dawn and questions her about the painter, whose name she does not know. Bébée dismisses Jeannot's objections and looks forward to learning through her new friend. She eats breakfast on her roof, delighted by the knowledge she expects to gain.

Chapter 9

Bébée finishes her chores, studies her reflection, and thanks the Virgin Mary for her beauty before taking flowers to town. After bringing Annémie money, patterns, and eggs, she learns that the sailor Annémie remembers so lovingly sometimes beat her. Bébée leaves puzzled by love and by the painter's remark about women having a dog's heart.

Chapter 10

The narrator explains that the stranger is a wealthy, celebrated painter who left France after writing a politically dangerous pamphlet. Seeking a model for his own Gretchen, he sees Bébée and follows her into the cathedral. Her innocence challenges his cynical view of women, but he still regards his power over her as decisive.

Chapter 11

Bébée receives an illustrated copy of Paul and Virginia from the painter, who gives his name as Flamen and tells her to call him Victor. Absorbed in reading, she turns away from the children's games and dismisses Jeannot's warning that books may undermine her livelihood. Jeannot apologizes, and Bébée goes to sleep cherishing the book and praying for Flamen.

Chapter 12

Bébée completes her daily work despite her excitement about books, while Reine warns that reading will make her dissatisfied. Seeing wealthy women with Flamen makes Bébée jealous, though she confesses only envy and hatred to Father Francis. Father Francis blames her silver buckles, and Bébée denies being covetous without revealing the reason for her feelings.

Chapter 13

Flamen visits Bébée regularly, brings her books, and encourages her love for him. Lisette mocks Bébée over their relationship, and Flamen dismisses the insult as jealousy. Bébée begins to think of Flamen as her lover and prays that she may deserve her happiness.

Chapter 14

Flamen visits Bébée early while most of her neighbours are away on a pilgrimage, and she offers him breakfast. He invites her to the forest, and she agrees after he reassures her about her wooden shoes. Bébée gives him a rose from beside the shrine, and Flamen expresses regret that she has no mother.

Chapter 15

Flamen drives Bébée into the forest, sketches her as Gretchen, and gives her food and stories. He had planned to seduce and abandon her, but her trust and thoughts move him. Flamen finds himself unable to treat Bébée as he has treated other young women.

Chapter 16

Flamen paints Bébée as Gretchen and talks with her about love and daisies. He tells her to keep their meetings private, and she explains that being with him makes her feel as happy as thinking of Christ. Flamen kisses her hands reverently and briefly feels that he cannot hurt her.

Chapter 17

Flamen takes Bébée to dinner at a forest café and offers her a life of luxury with him. He gently kisses her forehead, and Bébée feels overwhelming happiness and no longer feels alone. A student passes their arbour, and Flamen tells Bébée it is time to go home.

Chapter 18

Flamen brings Bébée home and reminds her to keep their outing secret. He considers entering her hut to seduce her, but her invitation to help choose roses for a religious offering stops him. Flamen declines, kisses Bébée again, and leaves her at the gate.

Chapter 19

Bébée tends her garden after Flamen leaves, happy that he cares for her and determined to learn more. Old Jehan offers her a future outing, unaware of the reason for her happiness, and she gives him three eggs. Bébée keeps her love secret while Jehan recalls how suddenly his own daughter's happiness ended in death.

Chapter 20

Flamen returns to Bébée's hut to tell her he is leaving for Paris. Bébée begs him to return, and he promises although he does not intend to keep his word. Flamen leaves despite her desperate pleas, leaving Bébée alone in grief.

Chapter 21

Flamen leaves the city, telling himself that Bébée will marry Jeannot and settle into village life. He treats his departure as an act of kindness and values the Gretchen picture he has gained from knowing her. Flamen returns to his former life, chiefly concerned with how Paris will receive his painting.

Chapter 22

Bébée continues working but becomes pale, quiet, and unwilling to play with the children. She endures the fruit girl's mockery and Jehan's concern while resolving to learn and improve herself until Flamen returns. Annémie urges patience in love, and Bébée shudders at the thought of Annémie's fifty years of waiting for a dead sailor.

Chapter 23

Bébée waits for Flamen through autumn, earning her living and studying books bought with money saved by missing meals. She grows thin and exhausted but keeps trusting his return and praying for him. Her pleasure in ordinary life disappears, while Father Francis and her neighbors suspect wrongdoing despite her denial.

Chapter 24

During winter, Bébée withdraws into her books while her neighbors increasingly avoid and suspect her. Annémie dies still expecting her sailor's return, leaving Bébée without the person she had cared for. Bébée lives on her garden and eggs, studying through the winter and tending her appearance to please Flamen when he returns.

Chapter 25

Bébée stops selling flowers and tends her garden while she waits for Flamen to return. As the months pass, she grows pale, lonely, and exhausted, but still believes he will keep his promise. She sometimes wishes he had left her alone, then blames herself for thinking against him.

Chapter 26

Bébée fetches Doctor Max for Reine's sick child and hears from Lisa that Flamen is dying in Paris. She packs clothes and asks old Jehan to care for her birds and garden, telling him she is going to pray. She leaves to reach Flamen and help him.

Chapter 27

Bébée cannot afford the train to Paris, and a thief steals the silver buckles she offers for her fare. She eventually reaches Flamen and finds him playing cards among laughing guests, with a woman embracing him. Bébée flees toward the river and asks to die, but Jeannot saves her and takes her home to Brabant.

Chapter 28

Jeannot brings Bébée home, where the neighbors regret their harshness and care for her as she lies silent and unresponsive. Bébée later goes to the familiar water, thinks of Flamen with another woman, and drowns herself. Flamen's messengers return with a dead rose and her worn wooden shoes, which he keeps as reminders that she loved him.

Storylines

  • Antoine and his wife take Bébée in and become her foster parents; Antoine's death leaves her grieving and without his companionship.

  • Bébée seeks to support herself through growing and selling flowers, continuing the livelihood she learned with Antoine despite its history of winter hardship.

    • Despite the physical strain of garden work, Bébée gathers two baskets of flowers, sets out toward the city and commits to an established selling place.
    • Bébée occupies her flower stall and sells nearly all her flowers, ending the day with fifty sous.
    • Bébée continues earning money by selling her garden flowers.
    • Bébée continues earning money by selling her flowers.
    • Bébée continues her flower livelihood by harvesting flowers and filling her baskets.
    • Bébée continues her flower-selling livelihood and earns a pouch full of pence.
    • Bébée affirms the value she places on work when Victor offers an enticing account of an idle, luxurious life.
    • Bébée continues carrying flowers into Brussels and supplements her livelihood with daily lace-work that provides subsistence and feed for her chickens.
    • Bébée continues her habitual journeys to Brussels to sell flowers.

  • Bébée commits to honoring Antoine's final instructions: remain in the hut, protect her household from troublesome occupants, care for the bird and goat, and preserve the flowers.

    • She continues tending and harvesting the flowers and locks her hut before leaving, carrying forward her household duties.
    • Her account of tending and praying for the damaged rose plant supplies further evidence of her commitment to preserving the flowers; the plant has recovered.
    • Her continued harvesting carries forward her commitment to tending the flowers.
    • Bébée continues tending the garden through repeated trips to water it.
    • Before leaving, Bébée secures Jehan's promise to care for her birds and flowers and entrusts him with her hut key, providing for her household duties during her absence.

  • Bébée struggles with grief and loneliness while resolving to live alone and perform her duties; work restores some contentment, but Francis challenges her resolve to remain alone.

    • Bébée makes plans for company, shares the old neighbor's sorrow and returns to birthday delight with Jeanne, finding companionship while continuing her independent life.
    • The children's welcome and the company of Krebs and the neighbors give Bébée companionship while she continues to maintain her own household.
    • Distressed after the painter leaves, she chooses solitude and garden work over visiting the Krebs household; troubled thoughts disturb her sleep.
    • She experiences unprecedented loneliness and restlessness and again seeks Annémie's companionship in her household, unsuccessfully.
    • Bébée first recognizes and articulates the extent of her loneliness, then experiences Victor's tenderness as a connection that makes her cease to feel alone.
    • Bébée's persistent sadness and unusual quietness deepen her struggle with loneliness following Victor's departure.
    • Sleepless waiting exhausts her, she grows very thin, and she loses her former pleasure in nature and interest in others.
    • Social rejection and Annémie's death deepen Bébée's isolation; she loses the purpose of supporting another and retreats increasingly into books.
    • She breaks into tears before Jehan and feels unwanted and isolated now that Annémie is gone.

  • Neighbors seek arrangements that would give them or their relatives access to Bébée's household, produce or property; she refuses, provoking anger and attacks on her origins.

  • Bébée's trust in previously kind neighbors is damaged by their reproaches and withdrawal; the local women's goodwill subsequently returns.

    • Birthday gifts, a blessing and shared delight provide further evidence of renewed goodwill toward Bébée.
    • Gifts for the gathering, Krebs's fiddle playing and the neighbors' attendance provide further evidence of communal goodwill toward Bébée.
    • She feels estranged from her childhood neighbors, believing they cannot understand her.
    • The neighbors' renewed coldness hurts Bébée, and her attempts to convince them of her innocence fail.
    • The neighbors interpret Bébée's withdrawal as evidence of shame or sin and again withdraw their friendship and acknowledgment.
    • The village women's rejection gives way to remorseful sympathy, attendance at Bébée's bedside and compliance with her request for a rosebud.

  • Bébée's belief in her fairy or flower parentage becomes troubling when neighbors stigmatize her foundling origins, leaving her uncertain and wishing for a caring human mother.

  • Bébée plans a supper with the charcoal-burner's children.

    • The supper remains pending: sacred beauty briefly makes her forget the children, but concern about their hunger renews her intention to return promptly to them and the cake.
    • Bébée returns to the waiting children and hosts the planned gathering, with sweets, milk, honeycomb, music and neighbors; the party ends when everyone disperses to bed.

  • The old neighbor shares his grief for Lisette with Bébée and gives her Lisette's ancestral silver clasps, partly for Antoine's sake; Bébée responds with sympathy.

  • Bébée commits to keeping her childhood flower-selling place at the Madeleine.

    • She puts her commitment into practice by taking her established flower-selling place and trading there successfully.
    • She returns to her usual selling place and continues trading there.

  • Bébée's growing attachment to the city's historic buildings accompanies a recurrent, painful awareness of her ignorance of the wider world.

    • Her concern with ignorance develops into a concrete opportunity to learn: Victor promises books, explains poetry, and she commits to reading.

  • The tinker proposes taking Bébée to St. Hubert's gallery, buying her a gift and seeing a puppet show; she intends to accept.

  • A stranger notices and follows Bébée, learns about her life and accompanies her from the cathedral. She returns his gold and eventually asks him to leave her, then runs away; he suggests meeting tomorrow but discards her roses.

    • The stranger returns and identifies himself as a painter. Bébée becomes absorbed in his work and protects him from the crowd, but discovering his deceptive gift strains their growing connection. She seeks reconciliation and is left feeling guilty.
    • The painter's absence accompanies a new loneliness, and Bébée wants renewed contact to explain herself and give him flowers.
    • Their renewed companionship brings Bébée both hurt and happiness. Victor recognizes her goodness and develops further interest, while his renewed promise to return delights her.
    • Bébée expects to see the stranger again and reveals that expectation to Jeannot.
    • Victor's selection of the little peasant as his prospective Gretchen model supplies an artistic motive for his initial pursuit into the cathedral.
    • Their acquaintance deepens through exchanged gifts and Victor's permission to use his personal name; Bébée expresses her attachment through daily prayer and a promised offering for his protection.
    • Her eagerness to share her reading with Victor becomes distress at his absence, terror of losing him and jealous pain on seeing him with other women.
    • Victor's repeated visits and Bébée's daily roses establish sustained intimacy; her confidence grows, and she entertains his being her lover with delight and fear.
    • Victor visits Bébée's garden and home; she receives him with intense joy, feeds him and gives him another rose.
    • Bébée begins to understand romantic attachment and experiences renewed confidence and overwhelming happiness with Victor.
    • Bébée's disclosure moves Victor to pity and respect; his gentle kiss gives her overwhelming happiness and an enduring sense of connection, which she acknowledges to him.
    • Their return and exchange of a fresh rose deepen their attachment; her trust moves Victor to tenderness, and his earlier kiss changes her sense of their intimacy, though he leaves feeling shame.

  • Bébée intends to wear her new red shoes at Sunday mass, but lacks stockings and considers saving to buy them next year.

    • She abandons saving because the Varnhart children need the money more. The unexpected stockings briefly remove the obstacle, but she returns them and the painter gives them away.

  • Bébée intends to ask Father Francis whether praying for stockings would be vain or wicked.

  • Bébée's desire for the stockings and the painter's goodwill conflicts with her refusal to accept a stranger's gift she cannot repay and her objection to his lie. She returns the gift but remains distressed and guilty.

    • Her concern about appearing ungrateful persists after returning the gift; she prepares to explain herself and offer flowers.
    • Her refusal continues to trouble her enough to cost her sleep; his professed unconcern disappoints her, though his later promise restores her happiness.

  • The painter intends to return tomorrow to finish his painting and declares that he will give Bébée no more gifts.

    • After going to Anvers and briefly deciding to leave Bébée alone, Victor renews his commitment to return and finish the picture, adding a promise to bring a book.

  • Under the painter's influence, Bébée begins to regard her bare feet as ugly and shameful.

    • The man's comparison of her to a flower deepens his influence over her appearance: she now takes her own beauty seriously, although she does not fully understand his comparison.
    • Comparison with Victor's jeweled companions makes Bébée feel ugly and insignificant, and anticipation of their outing brings shame about her wooden shoes.

  • Bébée wants to tell the absent painter that she is not ungrateful and give him the flowers she prepared.

    • Her concern about seeming ungrateful persists. The saved flower has died, but she renews her intention to give him a flower by promising her garden's best if he returns.

  • Bébée develops great affection and compassion for Annémie, bringing her food and helping with her room and livelihood.

    • Bébée sustains Annémie's income through concealed replacement work and is hurt by Victor's accusation against Annémie's husband.
    • Bébée resolves to take the two eggs she finds to Annémie, continuing her provision of food.
    • Bébée visits Annémie and supplies money, fresh lace patterns and eggs, continuing her practical care.
    • Bébée finds Annémie dying and subsequently loses her through death, ending their companionship and Bébée's care for her.

  • Bébée tries to persuade Annémie to live with her, but Annémie refuses.

    • Annémie's death makes Bébée's wish to have her live with her impossible.

  • Annémie suffers the lasting effects of losing her child and receiving news of the wreck in which Jeannot was presumed drowned; her impairment prevents her from attending the lace-maker's workplace.

    • The account of her sailor's beatings reveals that Annémie's enduring attachment and grief coexist with a history of mistreatment.

  • Bébée arranges for Annémie to make lace at home and undertakes to carry her patterns regularly and provide other assistance.

    • Bébée makes the arrangement work by secretly remaking the patterns and securing Annémie's usual payment, although her encounter with Victor distracts her from completing further patterns.
    • Bébée delivers fresh patterns for Annémie to prick, carrying out their arrangement for work at home.
    • Annémie's final incapacity and death end the arrangement for lace work and Bébée's continuing assistance.

  • Bébée secretly remakes Annémie's lace patterns so that Annémie receives her usual payment while Baes believes the work is Annémie's.

    • Annémie's death ends the purpose of secretly remaking her lace patterns; no disclosure of the deception is recorded.

  • Victor pursues Bébée with a concealed seductive purpose. He briefly resolves to leave her alone, but resentment at her imagined marriage to Jeannot renews his determination to intervene.

    • Victor deliberately courts Bébée through looks and voice without frightening her, successfully drawing her from shyness into confidence.
    • Victor learns that the villagers are absent and how strongly Bébée depends on him. Despite declaring that he must never betray or hurt his hostess, he extends their encounter into a proposed outing and urges concealment.
    • Victor intends a brief sexual affair followed by payment and abandonment, but his recognition of Bébée's innocence inhibits his pursuit of that plan.
    • Victor encourages a test of his love and makes continued meetings depend on discretion. A momentary reverence that restrains his passion passes.
    • Victor attempts to entice Bébée with luxury without work, but her account of work and suffering makes him ashamed of the temptation.
    • Victor forms an immediate intention to seduce Bébée and moves toward entering her home, but abandons entering on this occasion and leaves in shame; his broader purpose is not explicitly renounced.
    • Victor returns and considers staying the night, but resolves to leave without seducing Bébée. He rejects taking her with him because he expects to tire of her and walks away despite her distress.
    • Victor resolves to leave Bébée alone and departs the city, suspending his seductive pursuit.

  • Victor knowingly preserves Bébée's flattering illusion about his origins.

  • Bébée intends to make time to read and learn through the books Victor promises her.

    • Bébée receives Paul and Virginia, chooses learning over playing with the children, and becomes absorbed in reading.
    • She has begun reading and eagerly seeks Victor to discuss her delight in the book.
    • Victor supplies books, Bébée works through unfamiliar words and ideas, and his stories extend her knowledge.
    • Bébée renews her request for books and promises to maintain or increase her work while learning. Victor proposes reading about Gretchen but warns that knowledge brings discontent.
    • Bébée renews her resolve to read and learn.
    • Victor promises to leave many books and asks Bébée to educate herself during his absence; their delivery and her further study remain unshown.
    • Bébée renews her resolve to learn while awaiting Victor's return.
    • She sacrifices dinners to buy books, accepts explanations and loans from the bookseller, and learns much through persistent study despite opposition.
    • Bébée increasingly devotes herself to reading and acquires deep, though scattered, knowledge.

  • Bébée promises Victor her garden's best flower if he returns.

    • Victor returns and Bébée gives him her rosebud, fulfilling her promised flower gift.

  • Bébée commits to visiting Jeannot's mother tomorrow.

  • Bébée commits to trying to be wise as her encounters introduce experiences she does not yet understand.

    • Bébée works to understand new ideas and Lisette's accusation, considers a new meaning for her attachment, and seeks moral guidance through prayer.
    • Bébée explicitly resolves to become wiser and better.
    • Bébée resolves to become good, patient and wise and to obey the absent Victor's wishes until he returns.

  • Bébée struggles to understand how devotion can persist toward someone who inflicts suffering, learning that Annémie's beloved sailor beat her.

  • Victor's political pamphlet brings trouble that drives him across the border.

  • Victor resolves to paint a Gretchen for next year's Salon and selects the little peasant as a prospective model.

    • Victor pursues the painting by studying Bébée in her garden, recognizing that formal posing would destroy the innocent expression he wants.
    • Victor specifies a portrait of Bébée with her spinning wheel, connects it with Gretchen and obtains her consent.
    • Victor makes a substantial sketch of Bébée as a study for his Gretchen.
    • Victor intends to paint Bébée as Gretchen before romantic disillusionment changes her.
    • Victor obtains the ideal Gretchen image for his projected painting and promises to finish Bébée's portrait and exhibit it in Paris.

  • Victor begins to question his assumption that all women are corrupt, tentatively recognizing that some escape that corruption.

    • Victor recognizes Bébée's wisdom and distinctive innocence, strengthening the exception she presents to his cynical assumptions.
    • Bébée's innocence and directness provoke tenderness, shame and pity in Victor, strengthening his recognition of her difference from his prior assumptions about women.
    • Victor recognizes beauty and spiritual innocence in Bébée's thoughts, further challenging his assumption that all women are corrupt.
    • Victor briefly feels protective reverence for Bébée, but the feeling does not last.
    • Bébée's values shame Victor's attempt to tempt her, and her disclosure of loneliness evokes respect, further challenging his cynical view of women.

  • Jeannot's angry rebuke strains his friendship with Bébée. He apologizes and receives her assurance of continuing friendship, but leaves downhearted.

    • Jeannot concludes that Bébée will never love him and grieves over her change. His criticism of her absent lover costs him her friendship; she asks him not to speak to her and declines his firewood.
    • Jeannot searches for Bébée, prevents her from entering the river and takes her home. She recognizes his tearful concern but asks not to be touched; renewed romantic affection is not established.

  • Bébée promises her sole great cactus flower to Our Lady at the Feast of Roses in exchange for Victor's protection.

  • Bébée's attachment to Victor brings terror at the thought of his departure and jealousy of his female companions; her envy and hatred trouble her conscience and prevent her from praying freely.

    • Her attachment becomes sustained happiness and the delighted, fearful possibility of love; moral unease persists, but prayer now gives reassurance.
    • Bébée tells Victor of her jealousy and reveals that believing he had departed drove her into despair, self-hatred and resentment toward heaven. He now knows the strength of her attachment.
    • Bébée's joy at Victor's return gives way to terror and grief when she learns he will depart tomorrow. She runs after him to stop him, but he puts her inside and leaves despite her cry.
    • Attachment to the absent Victor governs her sleepless waiting and increasingly frequent prayers, which make her feel close to him, while her other interests fade.
    • Her anguish prompts momentary reproaches against Victor for disturbing her former happiness, but she condemns these thoughts as sinful ingratitude and turns them into guilt and self-hatred.
    • News of Victor's dangerous illness provokes acute distress, but the prospect of helping him gives Bébée renewed courage and a purpose strong enough to undertake the journey.
    • Her fear of losing Victor becomes a devastating encounter with his intimacy with another woman, followed by flight and a wish to die.

  • Bébée confides her envy, hatred and difficulty praying to Father Francis, while withholding their connection to Victor.

    • Her confession to Francis is recalled, and she tells Victor that she confessed her hatred of his female companions; there is no evidence that Francis learns Victor's connection to it.

  • Bébée's exclusive daily gifts of roses to Victor alarm the market folk, who fear the implications of her attachment.

  • Lisette tries to draw Bébée into fairs and wine-shop balls, but abandons her attempts after the market women threaten to inform her mother.

  • Lisette interprets Bébée's attachment to Victor as a sexual fall, warns that his pleasures will be brief, and hurts Bébée with insinuations she does not fully understand.

  • As Victor opens a new imaginative world to Bébée, she feels increasingly distant from her childhood friends.

    • Her studies, defense of her lover and diminishing interest in others deepen her separation from childhood companions and neighbors.
    • The children cease asking Bébée to play, while her growing absorption in books further separates her from her former social world.

  • Bébée seeks Victor's explanation of Lisette's accusation.

  • Bébée asks God to remove any hidden wickedness and make her worthy of her happiness with Victor.

  • Bébée recognizes that her desire to see Victor could conflict with religious duty, yet declares that she would still wish to see him and would honestly acknowledge the wrong to Mary.

  • Victor abandons his proposed visit to Mayence and proposes a forest holiday with Bébée at Soignies, including a café meal, stories and painting; she welcomes the prospect.

    • Their forest holiday takes place: Bébée delights in the journey and woods, Victor sketches her and tells her stories from the poets, and he orders breakfast brought into the woods.
    • The forest holiday is underway; Victor restores Bébée's pleasure after frightening her, and Jeannot passes their concealed position.
    • They enjoy the forest outing and reach the café; Victor then declares that the outing should end and Bébée should return home.

  • Victor presses Bébée to conceal their outing by letting others believe she has gone on pilgrimage or by telling an untruth.

    • Victor prevents Bébée from greeting Jeannot and teaches her that continued meetings require discretion; she relinquishes her expectation of freely telling the neighbors about their outing.
    • Victor reaffirms that the outing must remain secret, while Bébée feels moral anxiety and seeks reassurance from him.

  • Bébée fears that a fiend can enter daisies used to divine love; Victor encourages her to test his love with the spell despite her fear.

  • Bébée resolves never to consult daisies so that the fiend cannot enter them.

  • Bébée promises the Holy Mother to work harder in gratitude for her happiness after the outing.

  • Victor and Bébée keep their forest outing secret from the pilgrims, while Bébée worries whether concealment is wrong and wants his reassurance.

    • Keeping the outing secret produces both shame at being unable to recount it openly and pleasure in its concealment.

  • Bébée plans to cut roses and take them to Our Lady's altar at St. Guido in thanksgiving; she asks Victor to choose and touch the offering, but he declines to enter.

  • Jehan proposes that Jeannot take Bébée to the Fête Dieu and tentatively offers money for the outing.

  • Victor announces his departure tomorrow and promises Bébée a return before winter, then a very quick return, although he knowingly makes the promise falsely to ease her grief.

    • Victor carries out his announced departure; his promised return remains outstanding.

  • Bébée tries to prevent Victor from leaving her.

    • Victor leaves the city despite Bébée's effort to prevent his departure.

  • Annémie's deteriorating sight threatens her with blindness.

    • Annémie's terminal decline and death end the ongoing threat of future blindness without establishing whether she became blind.

  • A bookseller supports Bébée's studies by explaining difficult points and lending her additional books.

  • Bébée's sustained study meets opposition from the village children, who urge her to burn her books; she persists.

  • The neighbors try to persuade Jeannot to abandon Bébée and marry Lisa.

  • Bébée renews her determination to soften her skin for Victor, emulating the women he has loved.

  • Bébée tends her flowers to make the garden beautiful for Victor's promised return.

  • Bébée undertakes to fetch medical help for Reine's critically ill child and sends Doctor Max to attend the child.

  • Believing Victor dangerously ill in Paris and accepting Lisa's unsupported claim that he is poor, Bébée resolves to reach and help him despite distance and danger, and sets out.

    • Bébée reaches Victor and remains willing to nurse him even without reciprocated affection, but his luxurious home contradicts his supposed poverty and the revelry overturns her expectation of finding him desperately ill. She flees and returns home without caring for him.
    • Bébée dies without accomplishing her purpose of helping Victor; her shoes and rose reach him as the remaining testimony of her journey.

  • Bébée responds to Lisa's cruelty with love, gratitude and a promise to pray for her; Lisa feels pity and is painfully affected by Bébée's response.

  • Jehan agrees to care for Bébée's birds and flowers during her absence and receives her hut key.

  • Bébée conceals her journey's true purpose from Jehan by giving him a false account of her reason for leaving; whether he believes it is unconfirmed.

    • Jeannot discovers her absence and becomes convinced that she has gone to Paris, although the events do not establish whether Jehan believed her earlier account or whether Jeannot knows her full purpose.

  • Unable to afford rail passage and robbed of her silver buckles, Bébée undertakes to walk to Paris, budgeting her food and money and hoping for occasional lifts.

    • Her arrival in Paris is confirmed retrospectively, and she asks that Victor be told she walked all the way; her worn shoes subsequently reach him.

  • Bébée's journey to Victor exposes her to threats, hunger and exhaustion that progressively undermine her physical and perceptual stability.

    • Bébée's physical and perceptual collapse culminates in disorientation, an unobserved flight from her bed and death by drowning.

  • An old hawker undertakes to get Bébée across the frontier by passing her off as his daughter on his papers.

  • Overwhelmed by finding Victor with another woman, Bébée wants to die in the river; Jeannot restrains her.

    • Jeannot's earlier rescue postpones the outcome, but Bébée, believing herself still in Paris, again surrenders herself to the water and drowns.

  • On discovering Bébée missing, Jeannot sets out to find her in Paris.

    • Jeannot confirms that he found Bébée in Paris and saved her from drowning there.

  • After regaining consciousness, Bébée asks to be taken home, and Jeannot accompanies her back to Brabant by rail.

    • Bébée reaches her own garden and is carried indoors to her own bed, completing her requested return home.

  • Jeannot summons women to care for Bébée, and her village and city friends gather to attend her; their care cannot prevent her fatal return to the water.

  • Bébée requests that her wooden shoes and a moss-rosebud be sent to Flamen with word that she walked all the way to him.

Places

Brabant, Brussels, Laeken, Flanders, Montagne de la Cour, St. Guido, Mechlin, France, Broodhuis, Paris, Grande Place, Chapel of the Saint Sacrament, Rue Royale, The sea, Belgium, Arenberg Palace, Antwerpen, Rue du Musée, Hôtel de Ville, Street of Mary of Burgundy, Malines, Liége, The Ardennes, Black Forest, The big forest, Cambre woods, The graveyard of the poor, Boitsfort, Groenendael, Rixensart, Charleroi, Fleurus, La Roche, Ligny, Ottignies, Tilly, Villers, Valley of the Sambre, Alne, Erquelinnes, Marbais, St. Quentin