Pierrette...............................................................................................................................................................1

Honore de Balzac .....................................................................................................................................1

I. THE LORRAINS ................................................................................................................................1

II. THE ROGRONS ................................................................................................................................7

III. PATHOLOGY OF RETIRED MERCERS ....................................................................................12

IV. PIERRETTE ...................................................................................................................................23

V. HISTORY OF POOR COUSINS IN THE HOME OF RICH ONES ..............................................31

VI. AN OLD MAID'S JEALOUSY .....................................................................................................38

VII. DOMESTIC TYRANNY ..............................................................................................................48

VIII. THE LOVES OF JACQUES AND PIERRETTE ........................................................................55

IX. THE FAMILY COUNCIL .............................................................................................................66

X. VERDICTSLEGAL AND OTHER ............................................................................................71

At the dawn of an October day in 1827 a young fellow about sixteen years of age, whose clothing proclaimed

what modern phraseology so insolently calls a proletary, was standing in a small square of Lower Provins. At

that early hour he could examine without being observed the various houses surrounding the open space,

which was oblong in form. The mills along the river were already working; the whirr of their wheels,

repeated by the echoes of the Upper Town in the keen air and sparkling clearness of the early morning, only

intensified the general silence so that the wheels of a diligence could be heard a league away along the

highroad. The two longest sides of the square, separated by an avenue of lindens, were built in the simple

style which expresses so well the peaceful and matteroffact life of the bourgeoisie. No signs of commerce

were to be seen; on the other hand, the luxurious portecocheres of the rich were few, and those few turned

seldom on their hinges, excepting that of Monsieur Martener, a physician, whose profession obliged him to

keep a cabriolet, and to use it. A few of the housefronts were covered by grape vines, others by roses

climbing to the secondstory windows, through which they wafted the fragrance of their scattered bunches.

One end of the square enters the main street of the Lower Town, the gardens of which reach to the bank of

one of the two rivers which water the valley of Provins. The other end of the square enters a street which runs

At the latter, which was also the quietest end of the square, the young workman recognized the house of

which he was in search, which showed a front of white stone grooved in lines to represent courses, windows

with closed gray blinds, and slender iron balconies decorated with rosettes painted yellow. Above the ground

floor and the first floor were three dormer windows projecting from a slate roof; on the peak of the central

one was a new weathervane. This modern innovation represented a hunter in the attitude of shooting a hare.

The front door was reached by three stone steps. On one side of this door a leaden pipe discharged the

sinkwater into a small streetgutter, showing the whereabouts of the kitchen. On the other side were two

windows, carefully closed by gray shutters in which were heartshaped openings cut to admit the light; these

windows seemed to be those of the diningroom. In the elevation gained by the three steps were vent holes

to the cellar, closed by painted iron shutters fantastically cut in openwork. Everything was new. In this

repaired and restored house, the freshcolored look of which contrasted with the timeworn exteriors of all

the other houses, an observer would instantly perceive the paltry taste and perfect selfsatisfaction of the

The young man looked at these details with an expression of pleasure that seemed to have something rather

sad in it; his eyes roved from the kitchen to the roof, with a motion that showed a deliberate purpose. The

rosy glow of the rising sun fell on a calico curtain at one of the garret windows, the others being without that

luxury. As he caught sight of it the young fellow's face brightened gaily. He stepped back a little way, leaned

against a linden, and sang, in the drawling tone peculiar to the west of France, the following Breton ditty,

published by Bruguiere, a composer to whom we are indebted for many charming melodies. In Brittany, the

"We've come to wish you happiness in marriage, To m'sieur your husband As well as to you:

"You have just been bound, madam' la mariee, With bonds of gold That only death unbinds:

"You will go no more to balls or gay assemblies; You must stay at home While we shall go.

"Have you thought well how you are pledged to be True to your spouse, And love him like yourself?

"Receive these flowers our hands do now present you; Alas! your fleeting honors Will fade as they."

This native air (as sweet as that adapted by Chateaubriand to Ma soeur, te souvientil encore), sung in this

little town of the Brie district, must have been to the ears of a Breton maiden the touchstone of imperious

memories, so faithfully does it picture the manners and customs, the surroundings and the heartiness of her

noble old land, where a sort of melancholy reigns, hardly to be defined; caused, perhaps, by the aspect of life

in Brittany, which is deeply touching. This power of awakening a world of grave and sweet and tender

memories by a familiar and sometimes lively ditty, is the privilege of those popular songs which are the

superstitions of music,if we may use the word "superstition" as signifying all that remains after the ruin of

As he finished the first couple, the singer, who never took his eyes from the attic curtain, saw no signs of life.

While he sang the second, the curtain stirred. When the words "Receive these flowers" were sung, a youthful

face appeared; a white hand cautiously opened the casement, and a girl made a sign with her head to the

singer as he ended with the melancholy thought of the simple verses,"Alas! your fleeting honors will fade

To her the young workman suddenly showed, drawing it from within his jacket, a yellow flower, very

common in Brittany, and sometimes to be found in La Brie (where, however, it is rare),the furze, or

"Yes, Pierrette, yes. I am in Paris. I have started to make my way; but I'm ready to settle here, near you."

Just then the fastening of a window creaked in a room on the first floor, directly below Pierrette's attic. The

The lad jumped like a frightened frog to a bend in the street caused by the projection of a mill just where the

square opens into the main thoroughfare; but in spite of his agility his hobnailed shoes echoed on the stones

with a sound easily distinguished from the music of the mill, and no doubt heard by the person who opened

That person was a woman. No man would have torn himself from the comfort of a morning nap to listen to a

minstrel in a jacket; none but a maid awakes to songs of love. Not only was this woman a maid, but she was

an old maid. When she had opened her blinds with the furtive motion of the bat, she looked in all directions,

but saw nothing, and only heard, faintly, the flying footfalls of the lad. Can there be anything more dreadful

than the matutinal apparition of an ugly old maid at her window? Of all the grotesque sights which amuse the

eyes of travellers in country towns, that is the most unpleasant. It is too repulsive to laugh at. This particular

old maid, whose ear was so keen, was denuded of all the adventitious aids, of whatever kind, which she

employed as embellishments; her false front and her collarette were lacking; she wore that horrible little bag

of black silk on which old women insist on covering their skulls, and it was now revealed beneath the

nightcap which had been pushed aside in sleep. This rumpled condition gave a menacing expression to the

head, such as painters bestow on witches. The temples, ears, and nape of the neck, were disclosed in all their

withered horror,the wrinkles being marked in scarlet lines that contrasted with the wouldbe white of the

bedgown which was tied round her neck by a narrow tape. The gaping of this garment revealed a breast to

be likened only to that of an old peasant woman who cares nothing about her personal ugliness. The fleshless

arm was like a stick on which a bit of stuff was hung. Seen at her window, this spinster seemed tall from the

length and angularity of her face, which recalled the exaggerated proportions of certain Swiss heads. The

character of their countenancethe features being marked by a total want of harmonywas that of hardness

in the lines, sharpness in the tones; while an unfeeling spirit, pervading all, would have filled a physiognomist

with disgust. These characteristics, fully visible at this moment, were usually modified in public by a sort of

commercial smile,a bourgeois smirk which mimicked goodhumor; so that persons meeting with this old

maid might very well take her for a kindly woman. She owned the house on shares with her brother. The

brother, bythebye, was sleeping so tranquilly in his own chamber that the orchestra of the Operahouse

The old maid stretched her neck out of the window, twisted it, and raised her cold, paleblue little eyes, with

their short lashes set in lids that were always rather swollen, to the attic window, endeavoring to see Pierrette.

Perceiving the uselessness of that attempt, she retreated into her room with a movement like that of a tortoise

which draws in its head after protruding it from its carapace. The blinds were then closed, and the silence of

the street was unbroken except by peasants coming in from the country, or very early persons moving about.

When there is an old maid in a house, watchdogs are unnecessary; not the slightest event can occur that she

does not see and comment upon and pursue to its utmost consequences. The foregoing trifling circumstance

was therefore destined to give rise to grave suppositions, and to open the way for one of those obscure

dramas which take place in families, and are none the less terrible because they are secret,if, indeed, we

Pierrette did not go back to bed. To her, Brigaut's arrival was an immense event. During the nightthat Eden

of the wretchedshe escaped the vexations and faultfindings she bore during the day. Like the hero of a

ballad, German or Russian, I forget which, her sleep seemed to her the happy life; her waking hours a bad

dream. She had just had her only pleasurable waking in three years. The memories of her childhood had sung

their melodious ditties in her soul. The first couplet was heard in a dream; the second made her spring out of

bed; at the third, she doubted her ears,the sorrowful are all disciples of Saint Thomas; but when the fourth

was sung, standing in her night gown with bare feet by the window, she recognized Brigaut, the companion

of her childhood. Ah, yes! it was truly the wellknown square jacket with the bobtails, the pockets of which

stuck out at the hips,the jacket of blue cloth which is classic in Brittany; there, too, were the waistcoat of

printed cotton, the linen shirt fastened by a gold heart, the large rolling collar, the earrings, the stout shoes,

the trousers of bluegray drilling unevenly colored by the various lengths of the warp,in short, all those

humble, strong, and durable things which make the apparel of the Breton peasantry. The big buttons of white

horn which fastened the jacket made the girl's heart beat. When she saw the bunch of broom her eyes filled

with tears; then a dreadful fear drove back into her heart the happy memories that were budding there. She

thought her cousin sleeping in the room beneath her might have heard the noise she made in jumping out of

bed and running to the window. The fear was just; the old maid was coming, and she made Brigaut the

terrified sign which the lad obeyed without the least understanding it. Such instinctive submission to a girl's

bidding shows one of those innocent and absolute affections which appear from century to century on this

earth, where they blossom, like the aloes of Isola Bella, twice or thrice in a hundred years. Whoever had seen

the lad as he ran away would have loved the ingenuous chivalry of his most ingenuous feeling.

Jacques Brigaut was worthy of Pierrette Lorrain, who was just fifteen. Two children! Pierrette could not keep

from crying as she watched his flight in the terror her gesture had conveyed to him. Then she sat down in a

shabby armchair placed before a little table above which hung a mirror. She rested her elbows on the table,

put her head in her hands, and sat thinking for an hour, calling to memory the Marais, the village of

PenHoel, the perilous voyages on a pond in a boat untied for her from an old willow by little Jacques; then

the old faces of her grandfather and grandmother, the sufferings of her mother, and the handsome face of

Major Brigaut,in short, the whole of her careless childhood. It was all a dream, a luminous joy on the

Her beautiful chestnut hair escaped in disorder from her cap, rumpled in sleep,a cambric cap with ruffles,

which she had made herself. On each side of her forehead were little ringlets escaping from gray curlpapers.

From the back of her head hung a heavy braid of hair that was half unplaited. The excessive whiteness of her

face betrayed that terrible malady of girlhood which goes by the name of chlorosis, deprives the body of its

natural colors, destroys the appetite, and shows a disordered state of the organism. The waxy tones were in all

the visible parts of her flesh. The neck and shoulders explained by their blanched paleness the wasted arms,

flung forward and crossed upon the table. Her feet seemed enervated, shrunken from illness. Her nightgown

came only to her knees and showed the flaccid muscles, the blue veins, the impoverished flesh of the legs.

The cold, to which she paid no heed, turned her lips violet, and a sad smile, drawing up the corners of a

sensitive mouth, showed teeth that were white as ivory and quite small,pretty, transparent teeth, in keeping

with the delicate ears, the rather sharp but dainty nose, and the general outline of her face, which, in spite of

its roundness, was lovely. All the animation of this charming face was in the eyes, the iris of which, brown

like Spanish tobacco and flecked with black, shone with golden reflections round pupils that were brilliant

and intense. Pierrette was made to be gay, but she was sad. Her lost gaiety was still to be seen in the

vivacious forms of the eye, in the ingenuous grace of her brow, in the smooth curve of her chin. The long

eyelashes lay upon the cheekbones, made prominent by suffering. The paleness of her face, which was

unnaturally white, made the lines and all the details infinitely pure. The ear alone was a little masterpiece of

modelling,in marble, you might say. Pierrette suffered in many ways. Perhaps you would like to know her

Pierrette's mother was a Demoiselle Auffray of Provins, halfsister by the father's side of Madame Rogron,

Monsieur Auffray, her husband, had married at the age of eighteen; his second marriage took place when he

was nearly sixtynine. By the first, he had an only daughter, very plain, who was married at sixteen to an

By his second marriage the worthy Auffray had another daughter; but this one was charming. There was, of

course, an enormous difference in the ages of these daughters; the one by the first marriage was fifty years

old when the second child was born. By this time the eldest, Madame Rogron, had two grownup children.

The youngest daughter of the old man was married at eighteen to a man of her choice, a Breton officer named

Lorrain, captain in the Imperial Guard. Love often makes a man ambitious. The captain, anxious to rise to a

colonelcy, exchanged into a line regiment. While he, then a major, and his wife enjoyed themselves in Paris

on the allowance made to them by Monsieur and Madame Auffray, or scoured Germany at the beck and call

of the Emperor's battles and truces, old Auffray himself (formerly a grocer) died, at the age of eightyeight,

without having found time to make a will. His property was administered by his daughter, Madame Rogron,

and her husband so completely in their own interests that nothing remained for the old man's widow beyond

the house she lived in on the little square, and a few acres of land. This widow, the mother of Madame

Lorrain, was only thirtyeight at the time of her husband's death. Like many widows, she came to the unwise

decision of remarrying. She sold the house and land to her step daughter, Madame Rogron, and married a

young physician named Neraud, who wasted her whole fortune. She died of grief and misery two years later.

Thus the share of her father's property which ought to have come to Madame Lorrain disappeared almost

entirely, being reduced to the small sum of eight thousand francs. Major Lorrain was killed at the battle of

Montereau, leaving his wife, then twentyone years of age, with a little daughter of fourteen months, and no

other means than the pension to which she was entitled and an eventual inheritance from her late husband's

parents, Monsieur and Madame Lorrain, retail shopkeepers at PenHoel, a village in the Vendee, situated in

that part of it which is called the Marais. These Lorrains, grandfather and grandmother of Pierrette Lorrain,

sold wood for building purposes, slates, tiles, pantiles, pipes, etc. Their business, either from their own

incapacity or through illluck, did badly, and gave them scarcely enough to live on. The failure of the

wellknown firm of Collinet at Nantes, caused by the events of 1814 which led to a sudden fall in colonial

products, deprived them of twentyfour thousand francs which they had just deposited with that house.

The arrival of their daughterinlaw was therefore welcome to them. Her pension of eight hundred francs

was a handsome income at PenHoel. The eight thousand francs which the widow's halfbrother and sister

Rogron sent to her from her father's estate (after a multitude of legal formalities) were placed by her in the

Lorrains' business, they giving her a mortgage on a little house which they owned at Nantes, let for three

Madame Lorrain the younger, Pierrette's mother, died in 1819. The child of old Auffray and his young wife

was small, delicate, and weakly; the damp climate of the Marais did not agree with her. But her husband's

family persuaded her, in order to keep her with them, that in no other quarter of the world could she find a

more healthy region. She was so petted and tenderly cared for that her death, when it came, brought nothing

Some persons declared that Brigaut, an old Vendeen, one of those men of iron who served under Charette,

under Mercier, under the Marquis de Montauran, and the Baron du Guenic, in the wars against the Republic,

counted for a good deal in the willingness of the younger Madame Lorrain to remain in the Marais. If it were

so, his soul must have been a truly loving and devoted one. All PenHoel saw himhe was called

respectfully Major Brigaut, the grade he had held in the Catholic armyspending his days and his evenings

in the Lorrains' parlor, beside the window of the imperial major. Toward the last, the curate of PenHoel

made certain representations to old Madame Lorrain, begging her to persuade her daughterinlaw to marry

Brigaut, and promising to have the major appointed justice of peace for the canton of PenHoel, through the

influence of the Vicomte de Kergarouet. The death of the poor young woman put an end to the matter.

Pierrette was left in charge of her grandparents who owed her four hundred francs a year, interest on the little

property placed in their hands. This small sum was now applied to her maintenance. The old people, who

were growing less and less fit for business, soon found themselves confronted by an active and capable

competitor, against whom they said hard things, all the while doing nothing to defeat him. Major Brigaut,

their friend and adviser, died six months after his friend, the younger Madame Lorrain,perhaps of grief,

Like a sound merchant, the competitor set about ruining his adversaries in order to get rid of all rivalry. With

his connivance, the Lorrains borrowed money on notes, which they were unable to meet, and which drove

them in their old days into bankruptcy. Pierrette's claim upon the house in Nantes was superseded by the legal

rights of her grandmother, who enforced them to secure the daily bread of her poor husband. The house was

sold for nine thousand five hundred francs, of which one thousand five hundred went for costs. The

remaining eight thousand came to Madame Lorain, who lived upon the income of them in a sort of almshouse

at Nantes, like that of Sainte Perine in Paris, called SaintJacques, where the two old people had bed and

As it was impossible to keep Pierrette, their ruined little granddaughter, with them, the old Lorrains

bethought themselves of her uncle and aunt Rogron, in Provins, to whom they wrote. These Rogrons were

dead. The letter might, therefore, have easily been lost; but if anything here below can take the place of

Providence, it is the post. Postal spirit, incomparably above public spirit, exceeds in brilliancy of resource and

invention the ablest romancewriters. When the post gets hold of a letter, worth, to it, from three to ten sous,

and does not immediately know where to find the person to whom that letter is addressed, it displays a

financial anxiety only to be met with in very pertinacious creditors. The post goes and comes and ferrets

through all the eightysix departments. Difficulties only arouse the genius of the clerks, who may really be

called menofletters, and who set about to search for that unknown human being with as much ardor as the

mathematicians of the Bureau give to longitudes. They literally ransack the whole kingdom. At the first ray of

hope all the post offices in Paris are alert. Sometimes the receiver of a missing letter is amazed at the

network of scrawled directions which covers both back and front of the missive,glorious vouchers for the

administrative persistency with which the post has been at work. If a man undertook what the post

accomplishes, he would lose ten thousand francs in travel, time, and money, to recover ten sous. The letter of

the old Lorrains, addressed to Monsieur Rogron of Provins (who had then been dead a year) was conveyed by

the post in due time to Monsieur Rogron, son of the deceased, a mercer in the rue SaintDenis in Paris. And

this is where the postal spirit obtains its greatest triumph. An heir is always more or less anxious to know if

he has picked up every scrap of his inheritance, if he has not overlooked a credit, or a trunk of old clothes.

The Treasury knows that. A letter addressed to the late Rogron at Provins was certain to pique the curiosity of

Rogron, Jr., or Mademoiselle Rogron, the heirs in Paris. Out of that human interest the Treasury was able to

These Rogrons, toward whom the old Lorrains, though dreading to part with their dear little granddaughter,

stretched their supplicating hands, became, in this way, and most unexpectedly, the masters of Pierrette's

destiny. It is therefore indispensable to explain both their antecedents and their character.

Pere Rogron, that innkeeper of Provins to whom old Auffray had married his daughter by his first wife, was

an individual with an inflamed face, a veiny nose, and cheeks on which Bacchus had drawn his scarlet and

bulbous vinemarks. Though short, fat, and potbellied, with stout legs and thick hands, he was gifted with

the shrewdness of the Swiss innkeepers, whom he resembled. Certainly he was not handsome, and his wife

looked like him. Never was a couple better matched. Rogron liked good living and to be waited upon by

pretty girls. He belonged to the class of egoists whose behavior is brutal; he gave way to his vices and did

their will openly in the face of Israel. Grasping, selfish, without decency, and always gratifying his own

fancies, he devoured his earnings until the day when his teeth failed him. Selfishness stayed by him. In his

old days he sold his inn, collected (as we have seen) all he could of his late fatherinlaw's property, and

went to live in the little house in the square of Provins, bought for a trifle from the widow of old Auffray,

Rogron and his wife had about two thousand francs a year from twenty seven lots of land in the

neighborhood of Provins, and from the sale of their inn for twenty thousand. Old Auffray's house, though out

of repair, was inhabited just as it was by the Rogrons,old rats like wrack and ruin. Rogron himself took to

horticulture and spent his savings in enlarging the garden; he carried it to the river's edge between two walls

and built a sort of stone embankment across the end, where aquatic nature, left to herself, displayed the

In the early years of their marriage the Rogrons had a son and a daughter, both hideous; for such human

beings degenerate. Put out to nurse at a low price, these luckless children came home in due time, after the

worst of village training,allowed to cry for hours after their wetnurse, who worked in the fields, leaving

them shut up to scream for her in one of those damp, dark, low rooms which serve as homes for the French

peasantry. Treated thus, the features of the children coarsened; their voices grew harsh; they mortified their

mother's vanity, and that made her strive to correct their bad habits by a sternness which the severity of their

father converted through comparison to kindness. As a general thing, they were left to run loose about the

stables and courtyards of the inn, or the streets of the town; sometimes they were whipped; sometimes they

were sent, to get rid of them, to their grandfather Auffray, who did not like them. The injustice the Rogrons

declared the old man did to their children, justified them to their own minds in taking the greater part of "the

old scoundrel's" property. However, Rogron did send his son to school, and did buy him a man, one of his

own cartmen, to save him from the conscription. As soon as his daughter, Sylvie, was thirteen, he sent her to

Paris, to make her way as apprentice in a shop. Two years later he despatched his son, JeromeDenis, to the

same career. When his friends the carriers and those who frequented the inn, asked him what he meant to do

with his children, Pere Rogron explained his system with a conciseness which, in view of that of most

"When they are old enough to understand me I shall give 'em a kick and say: 'Go and make your own way in

the world!'" he replied, emptying his glass and wiping his lips with the back of his hand. Then he winked at

his questioner with a knowing look. "Hey! hey! they are no greater fools than I was," he added. "My father

gave me three kicks; I shall only give them one; he put one louis into my hand; I shall put ten in theirs,

therefore they'll be better off than I was. That's the way to do. After I'm gone, what's left will be theirs. The

notaries can find them and give it to them. What nonsense to bother one's self about children. Mine owe me

their life. I've fed them, and I don't ask anything from them,I call that quits, hey, neighbor? I began as a

cartman, but that didn't prevent me marrying the daughter of that old scoundrel Auffray."

Sylvie Rogron was sent (with six hundred francs for her board) as apprentice to certain shopkeepers

originally from Provins and now settled in Paris in the rue SaintDenis. Two years later she was "at par," as

they say; she earned her own living; at any rate her parents paid nothing for her. That is what is called being

"at par" in the rue SaintDenis. Sylvie had a salary of four hundred francs. At nineteen years of age she was

independent. At twenty, she was the second demoiselle in the Maison Julliard, wholesale silk dealers at the

"Chinese Worm" rue SaintDenis. The history of the sister was that of the brother. Young JeromeDenis

Rogron entered the establishment of one of the largest wholesale mercers in the same street, the Maison

Guepin, at the "Three Distaffs." When Sylvie Rogron, aged twentyone, had risen to be forewoman at a

thousand francs a year JeromeDenis, with even better luck, was headclerk at eighteen, with a salary of

Brother and sister met on Sundays and fetedays, which they passed in economical amusements; they dined

out of Paris, and went to Saint Cloud, Meudon, Belleville, or Vincennes. Towards the close of the year 1815

they clubbed their savings, amounting to about twenty thousand francs, earned by the sweat of their brows,

and bought of Madame Guenee the property and goodwill of her celebrated shop, the "Family Sister," one

of the largest retail establishments in the quarter. Sylvie kept the books and did the writing. JeromeDenis

was master and headclerk both. In 1821, after five years' experience, competition became so fierce that it

was all the brother and sister could do to carry on the business and maintain its reputation.

Though Sylvie was at this time scarcely forty, her natural ugliness, combined with hard work and a certain

crabbed look (caused as much by the conformation of her features as by her cares), made her seem like a

woman of fifty. At thirtyeight Jerome Rogron presented to the eyes of his customers the silliest face that

ever looked over a counter. His retreating forehead, flattened by fatigue, was marked by three long wrinkles.

His grizzled hair, cut close, expressed in some indefinable way the stupidity of a coldblooded animal. The

glance of his bluish eyes had neither flame nor thought in it. His round, flat face excited no sympathy, nor

even a laugh on the lips of those who might be examining the varieties of the Parisian species; on the

contrary, it saddened them. He was, like his father, short and fat, but his figure lacked the latter's brutal

obesity, and showed, instead, an almost ridiculous debility. His father's high color was changed in him to the

livid flabbiness peculiar to persons who live in close backshops, or in those railed cages called

countingrooms, forever tying up bundles, receiving and making change, snarling at the clerks, and repeating

The small amount of brains possessed by the brother and sister had been wholly absorbed in maintaining their

business, in getting and keeping money, and in learning the special laws and usages of the Parisian market.

Thread, needles, ribbons, pins, buttons, tailors' furnishings, in short, the enormous quantity of things which

go to make up a mercer's stock, had taken all their capacity. Outside of their business they knew absolutely

nothing; they were even ignorant of Paris. To them the great city was merely a region spreading around the

Rue SaintDenis. Their narrow natures could see no field except the shop. They were clever enough in

nagging their clerks and their young women and in proving them to blame. Their happiness lay in seeing all

hands busy at the counters, exhibiting the merchandise, and folding it up again. When they heard the six or

eight voices of the young men and women glibly gabbling the consecrated phrases by which clerks reply to

the remarks of customers, the day was fine to them, the weather beautiful! But on the really fine days, when

the blue of the heavens brightened all Paris, and the Parisians walked about to enjoy themselves and cared for

no "goods" but those they carried on their back, the day was overcast to the Rogrons. "Bad weather for sales,"

The skill with which Rogron could tie up a parcel made him an object of admiration to all his apprentices. He

could fold and tie and see all that happened in the street and in the farthest recesses of the shop by the time he

handed the parcel to his customer with a "Here it is, madame; nothing else today?" But the poor fool would

have been ruined without his sister. Sylvie had commonsense and a genius for trade. She advised her

brother in their purchases and would pitilessly send him to remote parts of France to save a trifle of cost. The

shrewdness which all women more or less possess, not being employed in the service of her heart, had drifted

into that of speculation. A business to pay for,that thought was the mainspring which kept the machine

Rogron was really only headclerk; he understood nothing of his business as a whole; selfinterest, that great

motor of the mind, had failed in his case to instruct him. He was often aghast when his sister ordered some

article to be sold below cost, foreseeing the end of its fashion; later he admired her idiotically for her

cleverness. He reasoned neither ill nor well; he was simply incapable of reasoning at all; but he had the sense

to subordinate himself to his sister, and he did so from a consideration that was outside of the business. "She

is my elder," he said. Perhaps an existence like his, always solitary, reduced to the satisfaction of mere needs,

deprived of money and all pleasures in youth, may explain to physiologists and thinkers the clownish

expression of the face, the feebleness of mind, the vacant silliness of the man. His sister had steadily

prevented him from marrying, afraid perhaps to lose her power over him, and seeing only a source of expense

and injury in some woman who would certainly be younger and undoubtedly less ugly than herself.

Silliness has two ways of comporting itself; it talks, or is silent. Silent silliness can be borne; but Rogron's

silliness was loquacious. The man had a habit of chattering to his clerks, explaining the minutiae of the

business, and ornamenting his talk with those flat jokes which may be called the "chaff" of shopkeeping.

Rogron, listened to, of course, by his subordinates and perfectly satisfied with himself, had come at last into

possession of a phraseology of his own. This chatterer believed himself an orator. The necessity of explaining

to customers what they want, of guessing at their desires, and giving them desires for what they do not want,

exercises the tongue of all retail shopkeepers. The petty dealer acquires the faculty of uttering words and

sentences in which there is absolutely no meaning, but which have a marked success. He explains to his

customers matters of manufacture that they know nothing of; that alone gives him a passing superiority over

them; but take him away from his thousand and one explanations about his thousand and one articles, and he

Rogron and Sylvie, two mechanisms baptized by mistake, did not possess, latent or active, the feelings which

give life to the heart. Their natures were shrivelled and harsh, hardened by toil, by privation, by the

remembrance of their sufferings during a long and cruel apprenticeship to life. Neither of them complained of

their trials. They were not so much implacable as impracticable in their dealings with others in misfortune. To

them, virtue, honor, loyalty, all human sentiments consisted solely in the payment of their bills. Irritable and

irritating, without feelings, and sordid in their economy, the brother and sister bore a dreadful reputation

among the other merchants of the rue SaintDenis. Had it not been for their connection with Provins, where

they went three or four times a year, when they could close the shop for a day or two, they would have had no

clerks or young women. But old Rogron, their father, sent them all the unfortunate young people of his

neighborhood, whose parents wished to start them in business in Paris. He obtained these apprentices by

boasting, out of vanity, of his son's success. Parents, attracted by the prospect of their children being

welltrained and closely watched, and also, by the hope of their succeeding, eventually, to the business, sent

whichever child was most in the way at home to the care of the brother and sister. But no sooner had the

clerks or the young women found a way of escape from that dreadful establishment than they fled, with

rejoicings that increased the already bad name of the Rogrons. New victims were supplied yearly by the

From the time she was fifteen, Sylvie Rogron, trained to the simpering of a saleswoman, had two faces,the

amiable face of the seller, the natural face of a sour spinster. Her acquired countenance was a marvellous bit

of mimicry. She was all smiles. Her voice, soft and wheedling, gave a commercial charm to business. Her

real face was that we have already seen projecting from the halfopened blinds; the mere sight of her would

have put to flight the most resolute Cossack of 1815, much as that horde were said to like all kinds of

When the letter from the Lorrains reached the brother and sister, they were in mourning for their father, from

whom they inherited the house which had been as good as stolen from Pierrette's grandmother, also certain

lands bought by their father, and certain moneys acquired by usurious loans and mortgages to the peasantry,

whose bits of ground the old drunkard expected to possess. The yearly taking of stock was just over. The

price of the "Family Sister" had, at last, been paid in full. The Rogrons owned about sixty thousand francs'

worth of merchandise, forty thousand in a bank or in their cashbox, and the value of their business. Sitting

on a bench covered with stripedgreen Utrecht velvet placed in a square recess just behind their private

counter (the counter of their forewoman being similar and directly opposite) the brother and sister consulted

as to what they should do. All retail shopkeepers aspire to become members of the bourgeoisie. By selling the

goodwill of their business, the pair would have over a hundred and fifty thousand francs, not counting the

inheritance from their father. By placing their present available property in the public Funds, they would each

obtain about four thousand francs a year, and by taking the proceeds of their business, when sold, they could

repair and improve the house they inherited from their father, which would thus be a good investment. They

could then go and live in a house of their own in Provins. Their forewoman was the daughter of a rich farmer

at Donnemarie, burdened with nine children, to whom he had endeavored to give a good start in life, being

aware that at his death his property, divided into nine parts, would be but little for any one of them. In five

years, however, the man had lost seven children,a fact which made the forewoman so interesting that

Rogron had tried, unsuccessfully, to get her to marry him; but she showed an aversion for her master which

baffled his manoeuvres. Besides, Mademoiselle Sylvie was not in favor of the match; in fact, she steadily

opposed her brother's marriage, and sought, instead, to make the shrewd young woman their successor.

No passing observer can form the least idea of the cryptogramic existence of a certain class of shopkeepers;

he looks at them and asks himself, "On what, and why, do they live? whence have they come? where do they

go?" He is lost in such questions, but finds no answer to them. To discover the false seed of poesy which lies

in those heads and fructifies in those lives, it is necessary to dig into them; and when we do that we soon

come to a thin subsoil beneath the surface. The Parisian shopkeeper nurtures his soul on some hope or other,

more or less attainable, without which he would doubtless perish. One dreams of building or managing a

theatre; another longs for the honors of mayoralty; this one desires a countryhouse, ten miles from Paris

with a socalled "park," which he will adorn with statues of tinted plaster and fountains which squirt mere

threads of water, but on which he will spend a mint of money; others, again, dream of distinction and a high

grade in the National Guard. Provins, that terrestrial paradise, filled the brother and sister with the fanatical

longings which all the lovely towns of France inspire in their inhabitants. Let us say it to the glory of La

Champagne, this love is warranted. Provins, one of the most charming towns in all France, rivals Frangistan

and the valley of Cashmere; not only does it contain the poesy of Saadi, the Persian Homer, but it offers

many pharmaceutical treasures to medical science. The crusades brought roses from Jericho to this

enchanting valley, where by chance they gained new charms while losing none of their colors. The Provins

roses are known the world over. But Provins is not only the French Persia, it is also Baden, Aix,

Cheltenham,for it has medicinal springs. This was the spot which appeared from time to time before the

After crossing the gray plains which lie between La FerteGaucher and Provins, a desert and yet productive,

a desert of wheat, you reach a hill. Suddenly you behold at your feet a town watered by two rivers; at the feet

of the rock on which you stand stretches a verdant valley, full of enchanting lines and fugitive horizons. If

you come from Paris you will pass through the whole length of Provins on the everlasting highroad of

France, which here skirts the hillside and is encumbered with beggars and blind men, who will follow you

with their pitiful voices while you try to examine the unexpected picturesqueness of the region. If you come

from Troyes you will approach the town on the valley side. The chateau, the old town, and its former

ramparts are terraced on the hillside, the new town is below. They go by the names of Upper and Lower

Provins. The upper is an airy town with steep streets commanding fine views, surrounded by sunken

roadways and ravines filled with chestnut trees which gash the sides of the hill with their deep gulleys. The

upper town is silent, clean, solemn, surmounted by the imposing ruins of the old chateau. The lower is a town

of mills, watered by the Voulzie and the Durtain, two rivers of Brie, narrow, sluggish, and deep; a town of

inns, shops, retired merchants; filled with diligences, travellingcarriages, and waggons. The two towns, or

rather this town with its historical memories, its melancholy ruins, the gaiety of its valley, the romantic charm

of its ravines filled with tangled shrubbery and wildflowers, its rivers banked with gardens, excites the love of

all its children, who do as the Auvergnats, the Savoyards, in fact, all French folks do, namely, leave Provins

to make their fortunes, and always return. "Die in one's form," the proverb made for hares and faithful souls,

Thus the two Rogrons thought constantly of their dear Provins. While Jerome sold his thread he saw the

Upper town; as he piled up the cards on which were buttons he contemplated the valley; when he rolled and

unrolled his ribbons he followed the shining rivers. Looking up at his shelves he saw the ravines where he

had often escaped his father's anger and gone anutting or gathering blackberries. But the little square in the

Lower town was the chief object of his thoughts; he imagined how he could improve his house: he dreamed

of a new front, new bedrooms, a salon, a billiardroom, a diningroom, and the kitchen garden out of which

he would make an English pleasureground, with lawns, grottos, fountains, and statuary. The bedrooms at

present occupied by the brother and sister, on the second floor of a house with three windows front and six

storeys high in the rue SaintDenis, were furnished with the merest necessaries, yet no one in Paris had finer

furniture than theyin fancy. When Jerome walked the streets he stopped short, struck with admiration at

the handsome things in the upholsterers' windows, and at the draperies he coveted for his house. When he

came home he would say to his sister: "I found in such a shop, such and such a piece of furniture that will just

do for the salon." The next day he would buy another piece, and another, and so on. He rejected, the

following month, the articles of the months before. The Budget itself, could not have paid for his architectural

schemes. He wanted everything he saw, but abandoned each thing for the last thing. When he saw the

balconies of new houses, when he studied external ornamentation, he thought all such things, mouldings,

carvings, etc., out of place in Paris. "Ah!" he would say, "those fine things would look much better at

Provins." When he stood on his doorstep leaning against the lintel, digesting his morning meal, with a vacant

eye, the mercer was gazing at the house of his fancy gilded by the sun of his dream; he walked in his garden;

he heard the jet from his fountain falling in pearly drops upon a slab of limestone; he played on his own

Sylvie, on the other hand, was thinking so deeply, pen in hand, that she forgot to scold the clerks; she was

receiving the bourgeoisie of Provins, she was looking at herself in the mirrors of her salon, and admiring the

beauties of a marvellous cap. The brother and sister began to think the atmosphere of the rue SaintDenis

unhealthy, and the smell of the mud in the markets made them long for the fragrance of the Provins roses.

They were the victims of a genuine nostalgia, and also of a monomania, frustrated at present by the necessity

of selling their tapes and bobbins before they could leave Paris. The promised land of the valley of Provins

attracted these Hebrews all the more because they had really suffered, and for a long time, as they crossed

The Lorrains' letter reached them in the midst of meditations inspired by this glorious future. They knew

scarcely anything about their cousin, Pierrette Lorrain. Their father got possession of the Auffray property

after they left home, and the old man said little to any one of his business affairs. They hardly remembered

their aunt Lorrain. It took an hour of genealogical discussion before they made her out to be the younger

sister of their own mother by the second marriage of their grandfather Auffray. It immediately struck them

that this second marriage had been fatally injurious to their interests by dividing the Auffray property

between two daughters. In times past they had heard their father, who was given to sneering, complain of it.

The brother and sister considered the application of the Lorrains from the point of view of such

reminiscences, which were not at all favorable for Pierrette. To take charge of an orphan, a girl, a cousin, who

might become their legal heir in case neither of them married,this was a matter that needed discussion. The

question was considered and debated under all its aspects. In the first place, they had never seen Pierrette.

Then, what a trouble it would be to have a young girl to look after. Wouldn't it commit them to some

obligations towards her? Could they send the girl away if they did not like her? Besides, wouldn't they have

to marry her? and if Jerome found a yoke mate among the heiresses of Provins they ought to keep all their

property for his children. A yokemate for Jerome, according to Sylvie, meant a stupid, rich and ugly girl who

would let herself be governed. They decided to refuse the Lorrain request. Sylvie agreed to write the answer.

Business being rather urgent just then she delayed writing, and the forewoman coming forward with an offer

for the stock and good will of the "Family Sister," which the brother and sister accepted, the matter went

Sylvie Rogron and her brother departed for Provins four years before the time when the coming of Brigaut

threw such excitement into Pierrette's life. But the doings of the pair after their arrival at Provins are as

necessary to relate as their life in Paris; for Provins was destined to be not less fatal to Pierrette than the

When the petty shopkeeper who has come to Paris from the provinces returns to the provinces from Paris he

brings with him a few ideas; then he loses them in the habits and ways of provincial life into which he

plunges, and his reforming notions leave him. From this there do result, however, certain trifling, slow,

successive changes by which Paris scratches the surface of the provincial towns. This process marks the

transition of the exshopkeeper into the substantial bourgeois, but it acts like an illness upon him. No retail

shopkeeper can pass with impunity from his perpetual chatter into dead silence, from his Parisian activity to

the stillness of provincial life. When these worthy persons have laid by property they spend a portion of it on

some desire over which they have long brooded and into which they now turn their remaining impulses, no

longer restrained by force of will. Those who have not been nursing a fixed idea either travel or rush into the

political interests of their municipality. Others take to hunting or fishing and torment their farmers or tenants;

others again become usurers or stockjobbers. As for the scheme of the Rogrons, brother and sister, we know

what that was; they had to satisfy an imperious desire to handle the trowel and remodel their old house into a

This fixed idea produced upon the square of Lower Provins the front of the building which Brigaut had been

examining; also the interior arrangements of the house and its handsome furniture. The contractor did not

drive a nail without consulting the owners, without requiring them to sign the plans and specifications,

without explaining to them at full length and in every detail the nature of each article under discussion, where

it was manufactured, and what were its various prices. As to the choicer things, each, they were told, had

been used by Monsieur Tiphaine, or Madame Julliard, or Monsieur the mayor, the notables of the place. The

idea of having things done as the rich bourgeois of Provins did them carried the day for the contractor.

"Oh, if Monsieur Garceland has it in his house, put it in," said Mademoiselle Rogron. "It must be all right; his

"What queer fellows you are, you architects!" cried Rogron. "It is stepping on eggshells to deal with you."

"Oh, but the salon and the staircase are too pretty not to have the corridor decorated too," said the man. "That

"Monsieur Tiphaine? he's got a pretty wife and is sure to get on. He'll go to Paris. Shall we paint the

"Yes, yes," said Rogron. "The Lesourds must be made to see that we are as good as they."

The first year after the Rogrons returned to Provins was entirely taken up by such discussions, by the pleasure

of watching the workmen, by the surprise occasioned to the townspeople and the replies to questions of all

kinds which resulted therefrom, and also by the attempts made by Sylvie and her brother to be socially

The Rogrons had never gone into any society; they had never left their shop, knowing absolutely no one in

Paris, and now they were athirst for the pleasures of social life. On their arrival in Provins they found their

former masters in Paris (long since returned to the provinces), Monsieur and Madame Julliard, lately of the

"Chinese Worm," their children and grandchildren; the Guepin family, or rather the Guepin clan, the

youngest scion of which now kept the "Three Distaffs"; and thirdly, Madame Guenee from whom they had

purchased the "Family Sister," and whose three daughters were married and settled in Provins. These three

races, Julliard, Guepin, and Guenee, had spread through the town like doggrass through a lawn. The mayor,

Monsieur Garceland, was the soninlaw of Monsieur Guepin; the curate, Abbe Peroux, was own brother to

Madame Julliard; the judge, Monsieur Tiphaine junior, was brother to Madame Guenee, who signed herself

The queen of the town was the beautiful Madame Tiphaine junior, only daughter of Madame Roguin, the rich

wife of a former notary in Paris, whose name was never mentioned. Clever, delicate, and pretty, married in

the provinces to please her mother, who for special reasons did not want her with her, and took her from a

convent only a few days before the wedding, Melanie Tiphaine considered herself an exile in Provins, where

she behaved to admiration. Handsomely dowered, she still had hopes. As for Monsieur Tiphaine, his old

father had made to his eldest daughter Madame Guenee such advances on her inheritance that an estate worth

eight thousand francs a year, situated within fifteen miles of Provins, was to come wholly to him.

Consequently the Tiphaines would possess, sooner or later, some forty thousand francs a year, and were not

"badly off," as they say. The one overwhelming desire of the beautiful Madame Tiphaine was to get

Monsieur Tiphaine elected deputy. As deputy he would become a judge in Paris; and she was firmly resolved

to push him up into the Royal courts. For these reasons she tickled all vanities and strove to please all parties;

andwhat is far more difficultshe succeeded. Twice a week she received the bourgeoisie of Provins at her

house in the Upper town. This intelligent young woman of twenty had not as yet made a single blunder or

misstep on the slippery path she had taken. She gratified everybody's selflove, and petted their hobbies;

serious with the serious, a girl with girls, instinctively a mother with mothers, gay with young wives and

disposed to help them, gracious to all,in short, a pearl, a treasure, the pride of Provins. She had never yet

said a word of her intentions and wishes, but all the electors of Provins were awaiting the time when their

dear Monsieur Tiphaine had reached the required age for nomination. Every man in the place, certain of his

own talents, regarded the future deputy as his particular friend, his protector. Of course, Monsieur Tiphaine

would attain to honors; he would be Keeper of the Seals, and then, what wouldn't he do for Provins!

Such were the pleasant means by which Madame Tiphaine had come to rule over the little town. Madame

Guenee, Monsieur Tiphaine's sister, after having married her eldest daughter to Monsieur Lesourd,

prosecuting attorney, her second to Monsieur Martener, the doctor, and the third to Monsieur Auffray, the

notary, had herself married Monsieur Galardon, the collector. Mother and daughters all considered Monsieur

Tiphaine as the richest and ablest man in the family. The prosecuting attorney had the strongest interest in

sending his uncle to Paris, expecting to step into his shoes as judge of the local court of Provins. The four

ladies formed a sort of court round Madame Tiphaine, whose ideas and advice they followed on all occasions.

Monsieur Julliard, the eldest son of the old merchant, who had married the only daughter of a rich farmer, set

up a sudden, secret, and disinterested passion for Madame Tiphaine, that angel descended from the Parisian

skies. The clever Melanie, too clever to involve herself with Julliard, but quite capable of keeping him in the

condition of Amadis and making the most of his folly, advised him to start a journal, intending herself to play

the part of Egeria. For the last two years, therefore, Julliard, possessed by his romantic passion, had published

the said newspaper, called the "Beehive," which contained articles literary, archaeological, and medical,

written in the family. The advertisements paid expenses. The subscriptions, two hundred in all, made the

profits. Every now and then melancholy verses, totally incomprehensible in La Brie, appeared, addressed,

"TO HER!!!" with three exclamation marks. The clan Julliard was thus united to the other clans, and the

salon of Madame Tiphaine became, naturally, the first in the town. The few aristocrats who lived in Provins

were, of course, apart, and formed a single salon in the Upper town, at the house of the old Comtesse de

During the first six months of their transplantation, the Rogrons, favored by their former acquaintance with

several of these people, were received, first by Madame Julliard the elder, and by the former Madame

Guenee, now Madame Galardon (from whom they had bought their business), and next, after a good deal of

difficulty, by Madame Tiphaine. All parties wished to study the Rogrons before admitting them. It was

difficult, of course, to keep out merchants of the rue SaintDenis, originally from Provins, who had returned

to the town to spend their fortunes. Still, the object of all society is to amalgamate persons of equal wealth,

education, manners, customs, accomplishments, and character. Now the Guepins, Guenees, and Julliards had

a better position among the bourgeoisie than the Rogrons, whose father had been held in contempt on account

of his private life, and his conduct in the matter of the Auffray property, the facts of which were known to

In the social life of these people, to which Madame Tiphaine had given a certain tone of elegance, all was

homogeneous; the component parts understood each other, knew each other's characters, and behaved and

conversed in a manner that was agreeable to all. The Rogrons flattered themselves that being received by

Monsieur Garceland, the mayor, they would soon be on good terms with all the best families in the town.

Sylvie applied herself to learn boston. Rogron, incapable of playing a game, twirled his thumbs and had

nothing to say except to discourse on his new house. Words seemed to choke him; he would get up, try to

speak, become frightened, and sit down again, with comical distortion of the lips. Sylvie naively betrayed her

natural self at cards. Sharp, irritable, whining when she lost, insolent when she won, nagging and

quarrelsome, she annoyed her partners as much as her adversaries, and became the scourge of society. And

yet, possessed by a silly, unconcealed ambition, Rogron and his sister were bent on playing a part in the

society of a little town already in possession of a close corporation of twelve allied families. Allowing that

the restoration of their house had cost them thirty thousand francs, the brother and sister possessed between

them at least ten thousand francs a year. This they considered wealth, and with it they endeavored to impress

society, which immediately took the measure of their vulgarity, crass ignorance, and foolish envy. On the

evening when they were presented to the beautiful Madame Tiphaine, who had already eyed them at Madame

Garceland's and at Madame Julliard the elder's, the queen of the town remarked to Julliard junior, who stayed

"No, no," said Amadis, "they bore my mother and annoy my wife. When Mademoiselle Sylvie was

"I have a great mind," said Madame Tiphaine, putting her pretty foot on the bar of the fender, "to make it

Julliard raised his eyes to the ceiling, as if to say, "Good heavens? what wit, what intellect!"

"I wish my society to be select; and it certainly will not be if I admit those Rogrons."

"They have neither heart, nor mind, nor manners"; said Monsieur Tiphaine. "If, after selling thread for twenty

"Your sister, my dear," said his wife in a parenthesis, "cannot be out of place in any salon."

"if," he continued, "people are stupid enough not to throw off the shop and polish their manners, if they

don't know any better than to mistake the Counts of Champagne for the accounts of a wineshop, as Rogron

"They are simply impudent," said Julliard. "To hear them talk you would suppose there was no other

handsome house in Provins but theirs. They want to crush us; and after all, they have hardly enough to live

"If it was only the brother," said Madame Tiphaine, "one might put up with him; he is not so aggressive. Give

him a Chinese puzzle and he will stay in a corner quietly enough; it would take him a whole winter to find it

out. But Mademoiselle Sylvie, with that voice like a hoarse hyena and those lobsterclaws of hands! Don't

"I have aborigines enough whom I am forced to receive; these two will fairly kill me. With your permission, I

"You are mistress in your own house," replied he; "but that will make enemies. The Rogrons will fling

themselves into the opposition, which hitherto has had no real strength in Provins. That Rogron is already

"Then," said Melanie, laughing, "they will do you some service. Where there are no opponents, there is no

triumph. A liberal conspiracy, an illegal cabal, a struggle of any kind, will bring you into the foreground."

The next day it was whispered about that the Rogrons had not altogether succeeded in Madame Tiphaine's

salon. That lady's speech about an inn was immensely admired. It was a whole month before she returned

Mademoiselle Sylvie's visit. Insolence of this kind is very much noticed in the provinces.

During the evening which Sylvie had spent at Madame Tiphaine's a disagreeable scene occurred between

herself and old Madame Julliard while playing boston, apropos of a trick which Sylvie declared the old lady

had made her lose on purpose; for the old maid, who liked to trip others, could never endure the same game

on herself. The next time she was invited out the mistress took care to make up the cardtables before she

arrived; so that Sylvie was reduced to wandering from table to table as an onlooker, the players glancing at

her with scornful eyes. At Madame Julliard senior's house, they played whist, a game Sylvie did not know.

The old maid at last understood that she was under a ban; but she had no conception of the reason of it. She

fancied herself an object of jealousy to all these persons. After a time she and her brother received no

invitations, but they still persisted in paying evening visits. Satirical persons made fun of them,not

spitefully, but amusingly; inveigling them to talk absurdly about the eggs in their cornice, and their wonderful

Before long the Rogron house was completely finished, and the brother and sister then resolved to give

several sumptuous dinners, as much to return the civilities they had received as to exhibit their luxury. The

invited guests accepted from curiosity only. The first dinner was given to the leading personages of the town;

to Monsieur and Madame Tiphaine, with whom, however the Rogrons had never dined; to Monsieur and

Madame Julliard, senior and junior; to Monsieur Lesourd, Monsieur le cure, and Monsieur and Madame

Galardon. It was one of those interminable provincial dinners, where you sit at table from five to nine o'clock.

Madame Tiphaine had introduced into Provins the Parisian custom of taking leave as soon as coffee had been

served. On this occasion she had company at home and was anxious to get away. The Rogrons accompanied

her husband and herself to the street door, and when they returned to the salon, disconcerted at not being able

to keep their chief guests, the rest of the party were preparing to imitate Madame Tiphaine's fashion with

"They won't see our salon lighted up," said Sylvie, "and that's the show of the house."

The Rogrons had counted on surprising their guests. It was the first time any one had been admitted to the

now celebrated house, and the company assembled at Madame Tiphaine's was eagerly awaiting her opinion

"Well!" cried little Madame Martener, "you've seen the Louvre; tell us all about it."

"Well, to begin with, that front door, the gilded grating of which we have all admired," said Madame

Tiphaine, "opens upon a long corridor which divides the house unequally; on the right side there is one

window, on the other, two. At the garden end, the corridor opens with a glass door upon a portico with steps

to the lawn, where there's a sun dial and a plaster statue of Spartacus, painted to imitate bronze. Behind the

kitchen, the builder has put the staircase, and a sort of larder which we are spared the sight of. The staircase,

painted to imitate black marble with yellow veins, turns upon itself like those you see in cafes leading from

the groundfloor to the entresol. The balustrade, of walnut with brass ornaments and dangerously slight, was

pointed out to us as one of the seven wonders of the world. The cellar stairs run under it. On the other side of

the corridor is the dining room, which communicates by foldingdoors with a salon of equal size, the

"The corridor, full of draughts, answers for an antechamber," replied Madame Tiphaine. "Our friends have

had, they assured us, the eminently national, liberal, constitutional, and patriotic feeling to use none but

French woods in the house; so the floor in the diningroom is chestnut, the sideboards, tables, and chairs, of

the same. White calico windowcurtains, with red borders, are held back by vulgar red straps; these

magnificent draperies run on wooden curtain rods ending in brass lion'spaws. Above one of the sideboards

hangs a dial suspended by a sort of napkin in gilded bronze,an idea that seemed to please the Rogrons

hugely. They tried to make me admire the invention; all I could manage to say was that if it was ever proper

to wrap a napkin round a dial it was certainly in a diningroom. On the sideboard were two huge lamps like

those on the counter of a restaurant. Above the other sideboard hung a barometer, excessively ornate, which

seems to play a great part in their existence; Rogron gazed at it as he might at his future wife. Between the

two windows is a white porcelain stove in a niche overloaded with ornament. The walls glow with a

magnificent paper, crimson and gold, such as you see in the same restaurants, where, no doubt, the Rogrons

chose it. Dinner was served on white and gold china, with a dessert service of light blue with green flowers,

but they showed us another service in earthenware for everyday use. Opposite to each sideboard was a large

cupboard containing linen. All was clean, new, and horribly sharp in tone. However, I admit the

diningroom; it has some character, though disagreeable; it represents that of the masters of the house. But

there is no enduring the five engravings that hang on the walls; the Minister of the Interior ought really to

frame a law against them. One was Poniatowski jumping into the Elster; the others, Napoleon pointing a

cannon, the defence at Clichy, and the two Mazepas, all in gilt frames of the vulgarest description,fit to

carry off the prize of disgust. Oh! how much I prefer Madame Julliard's pastels of fruit, those excellent Louis

XV. pastels, which are in keeping with the old diningroom and its gray panels,defaced by age, it is true,

but they possess the true provincial characteristics that go well with old family silver, precious china, and our

simple habits. The provinces are provinces; they are only ridiculous when they mimic Paris. I prefer this old

salon of my husband's forefathers, with its heavy curtains of green and white damask, the Louis XV.

mantelpiece, the twisted pierglasses, the old mirrors with their beaded mouldings, and the venerable card

tables. Yes, I prefer my old Sevres vases in royal blue, mounted on copper, my clock with those impossible

flowers, that rococco chandelier, and the tapestried furniture, to all the finery of the Rogron salon."

"What is the salon like?" said Monsieur Martener, delighted with the praise the handsome Parisian bestowed

"As for the salon, it is all red,the red Mademoiselle Sylvie turns when she loses at cards."

"Sylvanred," said Monsieur Tiphaine, whose sparkling saying long remained in the vocabulary of Provins.

"Windowcurtains, red; furniture, red; mantelpiece, red, veined yellow, candelabra and clock ditto mounted

on bronze, common and heavy in design,Roman standards with Greek foliage! Above the clock is that

inevitable goodnatured lion which looks at you with a simper, the lion of ornamentation, with a big ball

under his feet, symbol of the decorative lion, who passes his life holding a black ball, exactly like a deputy

of the Left. Perhaps it is meant as a constitutional myth. The face of the clock is curious. The glass over the

chimney is framed in that new fashion of applied mouldings which is so trumpery and vulgar. From the

ceiling hangs a chandelier carefully wrapped in green muslin, and rightly too, for it is in the worst taste, the

sharpest tint of bronze with hideous ornaments. The walls are covered with a red flock paper to imitate velvet

enclosed in panels, each panel decorated with a chromolithograph in one of those frames festooned with

stucco flowers to represent woodcarving. The furniture, in cashmere and elmwood, consists, with classic

uniformity, of two sofas, two easychairs, two armchairs, and six common chairs. A vase in alabaster, called

a la Medicis, kept under glass stands on a table between the windows; before the windows, which are draped

with magnificent red silk curtains and lace curtains under them, are cardtables. The carpet is Aubusson, and

you may be sure the Rogrons did not fail to lay hands on that most vulgar of patterns, large flowers on a red

ground. The room looks as if no one ever lived there; there are no books, no engravings, none of those little

knick knacks we all have lying about," added Madame Tiphaine, glancing at her own table covered with

fashionable trifles, albums, and little presents given to her by friends; "and there are no flowers,it is all

cold and barren, like Mademoiselle Sylvie herself. Buffon says the style is the man, and certainly salons have

From this sketch everybody can see the sort of house the brother and sister lived in, though they can never

imagine the absurdities into which a clever builder dragged the ignorant pair,new inventions, fantastic

ornaments, a system for preventing smoky chimneys, another for preventing damp walls; painted marquetry

panels on the staircase, colored glass, superfine locks,in short, all those vulgarities which make a house

No one chose to visit the Rogrons, whose social plans thus came to nothing. Their invitations were refused

under various excuses,the evenings were already engaged to Madame Garceland and the other ladies of the

Provins world. The Rogrons had supposed that all that was required to gain a position in society was to give a

few dinners. But no one any longer accepted them, except a few young men who went to make fun of their

Frightened at the loss of forty thousand francs swallowed up without profit in what she called her "dear

house," Sylvie now set to work to recover it by economy. She gave no more dinners, which had cost her forty

or fifty francs without the wines, and did not fulfil her social hopes, hopes that are as hard to realize in the

provinces as in Paris. She sent away her cook, took a countrygirl to do the menial work, and did her own

Fourteen months after their return to Provins, the brother and sister had fallen into a solitary and wholly

unoccupied condition. Their banishment from society roused in Sylvie's heart a dreadful hatred against the

Tiphaines, Julliards and all the other members of the social world of Provins, which she called "the clique,"

and with whom her personal relations became extremely cold. She would gladly have set up a rival clique,

but the lesser bourgeoisie was made up of either small shopkeepers who were only free on Sundays and

fetedays, or smirched individuals like the lawyer Vinet and Doctor Neraud, and wholly inadmissible

Bonapartists like Baron Gouraud, with whom, however, Rogron thoughtlessly allied himself, though the

The brother and sister were, therefore, forced to sit by the fire of the stove in the diningroom, talking over

their former business, trying to recall the faces of their customers and other matters they had intended to

forget. By the end of the second winter ennui weighed heavily on them. They did not know how to get

through each day; sometimes as they went to bed the words escaped them, "There's another over!" They

dragged out the morning by staying in bed, and dressing slowly. Rogron shaved himself every day, examined

his face, consulted his sister on any changes he thought he saw there, argued with the servant about the

temperature of his hot water, wandered into the garden, looked to see if the shrubs were budding, sat at the

edge of the water where he had built himself a kiosk, examined the joinery of his house,had it sprung? had

the walls settled, the panels cracked? or he would come in fretting about a sick hen, and complaining to his

sister, who was nagging the servant as she set the table, of the dampness which was coming out in spots upon

the plaster. The barometer was Rogron's most useful bit of property. He consulted it at all hours, tapped it

familiarly like a friend, saying: "Vile weather!" to which his sister would reply, "Pooh! it is only seasonable."

If any one called to see him the excellence of that instrument was his chief topic of conversation.

Breakfast took up some little time; with what deliberation those two human beings masticated their food!

Their digestions were perfect; cancer of the stomach was not to be dreaded by them. They managed to get

along till twelve o'clock by reading the "Beehive" and the "Constitutionnel." The cost of subscribing to the

Parisian paper was shared by Vinet the lawyer, and Baron Gouraud. Rogron himself carried the paper to

Gouraud, who had been a colonel and lived on the square, and whose long yarns were Rogron's delight; the

latter sometimes puzzled over the warnings he had received, and asked himself how such a lively companion

could be dangerous. He was fool enough to tell the colonel he had been warned against him, and to repeat all

the "clique" had said. God knows how the colonel, who feared no one, and was equally to be dreaded with

pistols or a sword, gave tongue about Madame Tiphaine and her Amadis, and the ministerialists of the Upper

town, persons capable of any villany to get places, and who counted the votes at elections to suit themselves,

About two o'clock Rogron started for a little walk. He was quite happy if some shopkeeper standing on the

threshold of his door would stop him and say, "Well, pere Rogron, how goes it with you?" Then he would

talk, and ask for news, and gather all the gossip of the town. He usually went as far as the Upper town,

sometimes to the ravines, according to the weather. Occasionally he would meet old men taking their walks

abroad like himself. Such meetings were joyful events to him. There happened to be in Provins a few men

weary of Parisian life, quiet scholars who lived with their books. Fancy the bewilderment of the ignorant

Rogron when he heard a deputyjudge named Desfondrilles, more of an archaeologist than a magistrate,

saying to old Monsieur Martener, a really learned man, as he pointed to the valley:

"Explain to me why the idlers of Europe go to Spa instead of coming to Provins, when the springs here have a

superior curative value recognized by the French faculty,a potential worthy of the medicinal properties of

"That is one of the caprices of caprice," said the old gentleman. "Bordeaux wine was unknown a hundred

years ago. Marechal de Richelieu, one of the noted men of the last century, the French Alcibiades, was

appointed governor of Guyenne. His lungs were diseased, and, heaven knows why! the wine of the country

did him good and he recovered. Bordeaux instantly made a hundred millions; the marshal widened its

territory to Angouleme, to Cahors,in short, to over a hundred miles of circumference! it is hard to tell

where the Bordeaux vineyards end. And yet they haven't erected an equestrian statue to the marshal in

"Ah! if anything of that kind happens to Provins," said Monsieur Desfondrilles, "let us hope that somewhere

in the Upper or Lower town they will set up a basrelief of the head of Monsieur Opoix, the rediscoverer of

"My dear friend, the revival of Provins is impossible," replied Monsieur Martener; "the town was made

"It was once a capital, holding its own against Paris in the twelfth century, when the Comtes de Champagne

held their court here, just as King Rene held his in Provence," replied the man of learning; "for in those days

civilization, gaiety, poesy, elegance, and women, in short all social splendors, were not found exclusively in

Paris. It is as difficult for towns and cities as it is for commercial houses to recover from ruin. Nothing is left

to us of the old Provins but the fragrance of our historical glory and that of our roses,and a sub

"Ah! what mightn't France be if she had only preserved her feudal capitals!" said Desfondrilles. "Can

subprefects replace the poetic, gallant, warlike race of the Thibaults who made Provins what Ferrara was to

"Why! where do you come from?" exclaimed the archaeologist. "Don't you know," he added, striking the

ground of the Upper town where they stood with his cane, "don't you know that the whole of this part of

"Yes, catacombs, the extent and height of which are yet undiscovered. They are like the naves of cathedrals,

"Monsieur is writing a great archaeological work to explain these strange constructions," interposed

Rogron came home much comforted to know that his house was in the valley. The crypts of Provins kept him

occupied for a week in explorations, and gave a topic of conversation to the unhappy celibates for many

In the course of these ramblings Rogron picked up various bits of information about Provins, its inhabitants,

their marriages, together with stale political news; all of which he narrated to his sister. Scores of times in his

walks he would stop and say,often to the same person on the same day,"Well, what's the news?" When

he reached home he would fling himself on the sofa like a man exhausted with labor, whereas he was only

worn out with the burden of his own dulness. Dinner came at last, after he had gone twenty times to the

kitchen and back, compared the clocks, and opened and shut all the doors of the house. So long as the brother

and sister could spend their evenings in paying visits they managed to get along till bedtime; but after they

were compelled to stay at home those evenings became like a parching desert. Sometimes persons passing

through the quiet little square would hear unearthly noises as though the brother were throttling the sister; a

moment's listening would show that they were only yawning. These two human mechanisms, having nothing

to grind between their rusty wheels, were creaking and grating at each other. The brother talked of marrying,

but only in despair. He felt old and weary; the thought of a woman frightened him. Sylvie, who began to see

the necessity of having a third person in the home, suddenly remembered the little cousin, about whom no

one in Provins had yet inquired, the friends of Madame Lorrain probably supposing that mother and child

Sylvie Rogron never lost anything; she was too thoroughly an old maid even to mislay the smallest article;

but she pretended to have suddenly found the Lorrains' letter, so as to mention Pierrette naturally to her

brother, who was greatly pleased at the possibility of having a little girl in the house. Sylvie replied to

Madame Lorrain's letter half affectionately, half commercially, as one may say, explaining the delay by their

change of abode and the settlement of their affairs. She seemed desirous of receiving her little cousin, and

hinted that Pierrette would perhaps inherit twelve thousand francs a year if her brother Jerome did not marry.

Perhaps it is necessary to have been, like Nebuchadnezzar, something of a wild beast, and shut up in a cage at

the Jardin des Plantes without other prey than the butcher's meat doled out by the keeper, or a retired

merchant deprived of the joys of tormenting his clerks, to understand the impatience with which the brother

and sister awaited the arrival of their cousin Lorrain. Three days after the letter had gone, the pair were

Sylvie perceived in her spurious benevolence towards her poor cousin a means of recovering her position in

the social world of Provins. She accordingly went to call on Madame Tiphaine, of whose reprobation she was

conscious, in order to impart the fact of Pierrette's approaching arrival,deploring the girl's unfortunate

position, and posing herself as being only too happy to succor her and give her a position as daughter and

"You have been rather long in discovering her," said Madame Tiphaine, with a touch of sarcasm.

A few words said in a low voice by Madame Garceland, while the cards were being dealt, recalled to the

minds of those who heard her the shameful conduct of old Rogron about the Auffray property; the notary

"Her grandfather and grandmother Lorrain wrote to uswhen was that, my dear?" said Rogron addressing

Sylvie, who was just then asking Madame Garceland where she had bought the stuff for her gown, answered

"That is a sort of hospital or almshouse for old people," said Monsieur Desfondrilles, who knew Nantes. "She

"Her mother had a little fortune, the eight thousand francs which your fatherno, I mean of course your

"Then you know nothing about your cousin's position or means?" asked Monsieur Tiphaine.

"If Monsieur Rogron had known it," said the deputyjudge, "he would never have left her all this time in an

establishment of that kind. I remember now that a house in Nantes belonging to Monsieur and Madame

Lorrain was sold under an order of the court, and that Mademoiselle Lorrain's claim was swallowed up. I

The notary spoke of Colonel Lorrain, who, had he lived, would have been much amazed to know that his

daughter was in such an institution. The Rogrons beat a retreat, saying to each other that the world was very

malicious. Sylvie perceived that the news of her benevolence had missed its effect,in fact, she had lost

ground in all minds; and she felt that henceforth she was forbidden to attempt an intimacy with the upper

class of Provins. After this evening the Rogrons no longer concealed their hatred of that class and all its

adherents. The brother told the sister the scandals that Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet had put into his

head about the Tiphaines, the Guenees, the Garcelands, the Julliards, and others:

"I declare, Sylvie, I don't see why Madame Tiphaine should turn up her nose at shopkeeping in the rue

SaintDenis; it is more honest than what she comes from. Madame Roguin, her mother, is cousin to those

Guillaumes of the 'Catplayingball' who gave up the business to Joseph Lebas, their soninlaw. Her father

is that Roguin who failed in 1819, and ruined the house of Cesar Birotteau. Madame Tiphaine's fortune was

stolen,for what else are you to call it when a notary's wife who is very rich lets her husband make a

fraudulent bankruptcy? Fine doings! and she marries her daughter in Provins to get her out of the way,all

on account of her own relations with du Tillet. And such people set up to be proud! Well, well, that's the

On the day when Jerome Rogron and his sister began to declaim against "the clique" they were, without being

aware of it, on the road to having a society of their own; their house was to become a rendezvous for other

interests seeking a centre,those of the hitherto floating elements of the liberal party in Provins. And this is

how it came about: The launch of the Rogrons in society had been watched with great curiosity by Colonel

Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet, two men drawn together, first by their ostracism, next by their opinions. They

both professed patriotism and for the same reason,they wished to become of consequence. The Liberals in

Provins were, so far, confined to one old soldier who kept a cafe, an innkeeper, Monsieur Cournant a notary,

Doctor Neraud, and a few stray persons, mostly farmers or those who had bought lands of the public domain.

The colonel and the lawyer, delighted to lay hands on a fool whose money would be useful to their schemes,

and who might himself, in certain cases, be made to bell the cat, while his house would serve as a

meetingground for the scattered elements of the party, made the most of the Rogrons' illwill against the

upper classes of the place. The three had already a slight tie in their united subscription to the

"Constitutionnel"; it would certainly not be difficult for the colonel to make a Liberal of the exmercer,

though Rogron knew so little of politics that he was capable of regarding the exploits of Sergeant Mercier as

The expected arrival of Pierrette brought to sudden fruition the selfish ideas of the two men, inspired as they

were by the folly and ignorance of the celibates. Seeing that Sylvie had lost all chance of establishing herself

in the good society of the place, an afterthought came to the colonel. Old soldiers have seen so many horrors

in all lands, so many grinning corpses on battlefields, that no physiognomies repel them; and Gouraud

began to cast his eyes on the old maid's fortune. This imperial colonel, a short, fat man, wore enormous rings

in ears that were bushy with tufts of hair. His sparse and grizzled whiskers were called in 1799 "fins." His

jolly red face was rather discolored, like those of all who had lived to tell of the Beresina. The lower half of

his big, pointed stomach marked the straight line which characterizes a cavalry officer. Gouraud had

commanded the Second Hussars. His gray moustache hid a huge blustering mouth,if we may use a term

which alone describes that gulf. He did not eat his food, he engulfed it. A sabre cut had slit his nose, by which

his speech was made thick and very nasal, like that attributed to Capuchins. His hands, which were short and

broad, were of the kind that make women say: "You have the hands of a rascal." His legs seemed slender for

his torso. In that fat and active body an absolutely lawless spirit disported itself, and a thorough experience of

the things of life, together with a profound contempt for social convention, lay hidden beneath the apparent

indifference of a soldier. Colonel Gouraud wore the cross of an officer of the Legion of honor, and his

emoluments from that, together with his salary as a retired officer, gave him in all about three thousand francs

The lawyer, tall and thin, had liberal opinions in place of talent, and his only revenue was the meagre profits

of his office. In Provins lawyers plead their own cases. The court was unfavorable to Vinet on account of his

opinions; consequently, even the farmers who were Liberals, when it came to lawsuits preferred to employ

some lawyer who was more congenial to the judges. Vinet was regarded with disfavor in other ways. He was

said to have seduced a rich girl in the neighborhood of Coulommiers, and thus have forced her parents to

marry her to him. Madame Vinet was a Chargeboeuf, an old and noble family of La Brie, whose name comes

from the exploit of a squire during the expedition of Saint Louis to Egypt. She incurred the displeasure of her

father and mother, who arranged, unknown to Vinet, to leave their entire fortune to their son, doubtless

Thus the first bold effort of the ambitious man was a failure. Pursued by poverty, and ashamed not to give his

wife the means of making a suitable appearance, he had made desperate efforts to enter public life, but the

Chargeboeuf family refused him their influence. These Royalists disapproved, on moral grounds, of his

forced marriage; besides, he was named Vinet, and how could they be expected to protect a plebian? Thus he

was driven from branch to branch when he tried to get some good out of his marriage. Repulsed by every

one, filled with hatred for the family of his wife, for the government which denied him a place, for the social

world of Provins, which refused to admit him, Vinet submitted to his fate; but his gall increased. He became a

Liberal in the belief that his fortune might yet be made by the triumph of the opposition, and he lived in a

miserable little house in the Upper town from which his wife seldom issued. Madame Vinet had found no one

to defend her since her marriage except an old Madame de Chargeboeuf, a widow with one daughter, who

lived at Troyes. The unfortunate young woman, destined for better things, was absolutely alone in her home

There are some kinds of poverty which may be nobly accepted and gaily borne; but Vinet, devoured by

ambition, and feeling himself guilty towards his wife, was full of darkling rage; his conscience grew elastic;

and he finally came to think any means of success permissible. His young face changed. Persons about the

courts were sometimes frightened as they looked at his viperish, flat head, his slit mouth, his eyes gleaming

through glasses, and heard his sharp, persistent voice which rasped their nerves. His muddy skin, with its

sickly tones of green and yellow, expressed the jaundice of his balked ambition, his perpetual

disappointments and his hidden wretchedness. He could talk and argue; he was wellinformed and shrewd,

and was not without smartness and metaphor. Accustomed to look at everything from the standpoint of his

own success, he was well fitted for a politician. A man who shrinks from nothing so long as it is legal, is

This future athlete of parliamentary debate, who was destined to share in proclaiming the dynasty of the

house of Orleans had a terrible influence on Pierrette's fate. At the present moment he was bent on making for

himself a weapon by founding a newspaper at Provins. After studying the Rogrons at a distance (the colonel

aiding him) he had come to the conclusion that the brother might be made useful. This time he was not

mistaken; his days of poverty were over, after seven wretched years, when even his daily bread was

sometimes lacking. The day when Gouraud told him in the little square that the Rogrons had finally

quarrelled with the bourgeois aristocracy of the Upper town, he nudged the colonel in the ribs significantly,

"One woman or anotherhandsome or uglyyou don't care; marry Mademoiselle Rogron and we can

"I have been thinking of it," replied Gouraud, "but the fact is they have sent for the daughter of Colonel

"You can get them to make a will in your favor. Ha! you would get a very comfortable house."

"As for the little girlwell, well, let's see her," said the colonel, with a leering and thoroughly wicked look,

which proved to a man of Vinet's quality how little respect the old trooper could feel for any girl.

After her grandfather and grandmother entered the sort of hospital in which they sadly expected to end their

days, Pierrette, being young and proud, suffered so terribly at living there on charity that she was thankful

when she heard she had rich relations. When Brigaut, the son of her mother's friend the major, and the

companion of her childhood, who was learning his trade as a cabinetmaker at Nantes, heard of her departure

he offered her the money to pay her way to Paris in the diligence,sixty francs, the total of his

pourboires as an apprentice, slowly amassed, and accepted by Pierrette with the sublime indifference of

true affection, showing that in a like case she herself would be affronted by thanks.

Brigaut was in the habit of going every Sunday to SaintJacques to play with Pierrette and try to console her.

The vigorous young workman knew the dear delight of bestowing a complete and devoted protection on an

object involuntarily chosen by his heart. More than once he and Pierrette, sitting on Sundays in a corner of

the garden, had embroidered the veil of the future with their youthful projects; the apprentice, armed with his

In October, 1824, when the child had completed her eleventh year, she was entrusted by the two old people

and by Brigaut, all three sorrowfully sad, to the conductor of the diligence from Nantes to Paris, with an

entreaty to put her safely on the diligence from Paris to Provins and to take good care of her. Poor Brigaut! he

ran like a dog after the coach looking at his dear Pierrette as long as he was able. In spite of her signs he ran

over three miles, and when at last he was exhausted his eyes, wet with tears, still followed her. She, too, was

crying when she saw him no longer running by her, and putting her head out of the window she watched him,

standing stockstill and looking after her, as the lumbering vehicle disappeared.

The Lorrains and Brigaut knew so little of life that the girl had not a penny when she arrived in Paris. The

conductor, to whom she had mentioned her rich friends, paid her expenses at the hotel, and made the

conductor of the Provins diligence pay him, telling him to take good care of the girl and to see that the

charges were paid by the family, exactly as though she were a case of goods. Four days after her departure

from Nantes, about nine o'clock of a Monday night, a kind old conductor of the Messageriesroyales, took

Pierrette by the hand, and while the porters were discharging in the Grand'Rue the packages and passengers

for Provins, he led the little girl, whose only baggage was a bundle containing two dresses, two chemises, and

two pairs of stockings, to Mademoiselle Rogron's house, which was pointed out to him by the director at the

"Goodevening, mademoiselle and the rest of the company. I've brought you a cousin, and here she is; and a

nice little girl too, upon my word. You have fortyseven francs to pay me, and sign my book."

"Excuse me," said the conductor, "the coach is waiting. Sign my book and pay me fortyseven francs, sixty

centimes, and whatever you please for myself and the conductor from Nantes; we've taken care of the little

girl as if she were our own; and paid for her beds and her food, also her fare to Provins, and other little

"Stop talking, and pay him," said Sylvie, "You see there's nothing else to be done."

Sylvie took two francs from the depths of the old velvet bag which held her keys.

"Thank you, no," said the man; "keep 'em yourself. We would rather care for the little one for her own sake."

He picked up his book and departed, saying to the servantgirl: "What a pair! it seems there are crocodiles

"They took good care of the little girl, anyhow," said Adele with her hands on her hips.

Such was the arrival of Pierrette Lorrain in the home of her cousins, who gazed at her with stolid eyes; she

was tossed to them like a package, with no intermediate state between the wretched chamber at

SaintJacques and the diningroom of her cousins, which seemed to her a palace. She was shy and

speechless. To all other eyes than those of the Rogrons the little Breton girl would have seemed enchanting as

she stood there in her petticoat of coarse blue flannel, with a pink cambric apron, thick shoes, blue stockings,

and a white kerchief, her hands being covered by red worsted mittens edged with white, bought for her by the

conductor. Her dainty Breton cap (which had been washed in Paris, for the journey from Nantes had rumpled

it) was like a halo round her happy little face. This national cap, of the finest lawn, trimmed with stiffened

lace pleated in flat folds, deserves description, it was so dainty and simple. The light coming through the

texture and the lace produced a partial shadow, the soft shadow of a light upon the skin, which gave her the

virginal grace that all painters seek and Leopold Robert found for the Raffaelesque face of the woman who

holds a child in his picture of "The Gleaners." Beneath this fluted frame of light sparkled a white and rosy

and artless face, glowing with vigorous health. The warmth of the room brought the blood to the cheeks, to

the tips of the pretty ears, to the lips and the end of the delicate nose, making the natural white of the

"Well, are you not going to say anything? I am your cousin Sylvie, and that is your cousin Rogron."

"Poor little dear, she has hardly any clothes," cried Adele, who had opened the child's bundle, tied up in a

"She is tired out with her journey, poor little thing; she wants to go to sleep," said Adele.

Pierrette was overcome with a sudden and invincible aversion for her two relatives,a feeling that no one

had ever before excited in her. Sylvie and the maid took her up to bed in the room where Brigaut afterwards

noticed the white cotton curtain. In it was a little bed with a pole painted blue, from which hung a calico

curtain; a walnut bureau without a marble top, a small table, a lookingglass, a very common nighttable

without a door, and three chairs completed the furniture of the room. The walls, which sloped in front, were

hung with a shabby paper, blue with black flowers. The tiled floor, stained red and polished, was icy to the

feet. There was no carpet except for a strip at the bedside. The mantelpiece of common marble was adorned

by a mirror, two candelabra in coppergilt, and a vulgar alabaster cup in which two pigeons, forming

"She's not difficult to please," muttered the stout servant. "Sha'n't I warm her bed?" she asked.

Adele brought one of her own nightcaps when she returned with the warmingpan, and Pierrette, who had

never slept in anything but the coarsest linen sheets, was amazed at the fineness and softness of the cotton

ones. When she was fairly in bed and tucked up, Adele, going downstairs with Sylvie, could not refrain from

Ever since her economical regime began, Sylvie had compelled the maid to sit in the diningroom so that one

fire and one lamp could do for all; except when Colonel Gouraud and Vinet came, on which occasions Adele

"We must get her some clothes tomorrow," said Sylvie; "she has absolutely nothing."

"How she looked at her room! though it really isn't handsome enough for a cousin of yours, mademoiselle."

"Gracious, what chemises! coarse enough to scratch her skin off; not a thing can she use here," said Adele,

Master, mistress, and servant were busy till past ten o'clock, deciding what cambric they should buy for the

new chemises, how many pairs of stockings, how many underpetticoats, and what material, and in

"You won't get off under three hundred francs," said Rogron, who could remember the different prices, and

The brother and sister went over the calculation once more, and found the cost would be fully three hundred

"Three hundred francs at one stroke!" said Sylvie to herself as she got into bed.

Pierrette was one of those children of love whom love endows with its tenderness, its vivacity, its gaiety, its

nobility, its devotion. Nothing had so far disturbed or wounded a heart that was delicate as that of a fawn, but

which was now painfully repressed by the cold greeting of her cousins. If Brittany had been full of outward

misery, at least it was full of love. The old Lorrains were the most incapable of merchants, but they were also

the most loving, frank, caressing, of friends, like all who are incautious and free from calculation. Their little

granddaughter had received no other education at PenHoel than that of nature. Pierrette went where she

liked, in a boat on the pond, or roaming the village and the fields with Jacques Brigaut, her comrade, exactly

as Paul and Virginia might have done. Petted by everybody, free as air, they gaily chased the joys of

childhood. In summer they ran to watch the fishing, they caught the manycolored insects, they gathered

flowers, they gardened; in winter they made slides, they built snowmen or huts, or pelted each other with

When the time came to begin their education, disasters came, too. Jacques, left without means at the death of

his father, was apprenticed by his relatives to a cabinetmaker, and fed by charity, as Pierrette was soon to be

at SaintJacques. Until the little girl was taken with her grandparents to that asylum, she had known nothing

but fond caresses and protection from every one. Accustomed to confide in so much love, the little darling

missed in these rich relatives, so eagerly desired, the kindly looks and ways which all the world, even

strangers and the conductors of the coaches, had bestowed upon her. Her bewilderment, already great, was

increased by the moral atmosphere she had entered. The heart turns suddenly cold or hot like the body. The

poor child wanted to cry, without knowing why; but being very tired she went to sleep.

The next morning, Pierrette being, like all country children, accustomed to get up early, was awake two hours

before the cook. She dressed herself, stepping on tiptoe about her room, looked out at the little square, started

to go downstairs and was struck with amazement by the beauties of the staircase. She stopped to examine all

its details: the painted walls, the brasses, the various ornamentations, the window fixtures. Then she went

down to the gardendoor, but was unable to open it, and returned to her room to wait until Adele should be

stirring. As soon as the woman went to the kitchen Pierrette flew to the garden and took possession of it, ran

to the river, was amazed at the kiosk, and sat down in it; truly, she had enough to see and to wonder at until

"Was it you, little one, who was trotting over my head by daybreak, and making that racket on the stairs? You

woke me so that I couldn't go to sleep again. You must be very good and quiet, and amuse yourself without

"And you must wipe your feet," said Rogron. "You went into the kiosk with your dirty shoes, and they've

tracked all over the floor. Your cousin likes cleanliness. A great girl like you ought to be clean. Weren't you

clean in Brittany? But I recollect when I went down there to buy thread it was pitiable to see the folks,they

were like savages. At any rate she has a good appetite," added Rogron, looking at his sister; "one would think

Thus, from the very start Pierrette was hurt by the remarks of her two cousins,hurt, she knew not why. Her

straightforward, open nature, hitherto left to itself, was not given to reflection. Incapable of thinking that her

cousins were hard, she was fated to find it out slowly through suffering. After breakfast the brother and sister,

pleased with Pierrette's astonishment at the house and anxious to enjoy it, took her to the salon to show her its

splendors and teach her not to touch them. Many celibates, driven by loneliness and the moral necessity of

caring for something, substitute factitious affections for natural ones; they love dogs, cats, canaries, servants,

or their confessor. Rogron and Sylvie had come to the pass of loving immoderately their house and furniture,

which had cost them so dear. Sylvie began by helping Adele in the mornings to dust and arrange the

furniture, under pretence that she did not know how to keep it looking as good as new. This dusting was soon

a desired occupation to her, and the furniture, instead of losing its value in her eyes, became ever more

precious. To use things without hurting them or soiling them or scratching the woodwork or clouding the

varnish, that was the problem which soon became the mania of the old maid's life. Sylvie had a closet full of

bits of wool, wax, varnish, and brushes, which she had learned to use with the dexterity of a cabinetmaker;

she had her feather dusters and her dustingcloths; and she rubbed away without fear of hurting herself,she

was so strong. The glance of her cold blue eyes, hard as steel, was forever roving over the furniture and under

it, and you could as soon have found a tender spot in her heart as a bit of fluff under the sofa.

After the remarks made at Madame Tiphaine's, Sylvie dared not flinch from the three hundred francs for

Pierrette's clothes. During the first week her time was wholly taken up, and Pierrette's too, by frocks to order

and try on, chemises and petticoats to cut out and have made by a seamstress who went out by the day.

"That's pretty bringing up!" said Rogron. "Don't you know how to do anything, little girl?"

"I played," she answered, naively. "Everybody played with me. Grandmamma and grandpapa they told me

"She is as stupid as an owl," said Sylvie to Mademoiselle Borain, the best seamstress in Provins.

"She's so young," said the workwoman, looking kindly at Pierrette, whose delicate little muzzle was turned

Pierrette preferred the sewingwomen to her relations. She was endearing in her ways with them, she

watched their work, and made them those pretty speeches that seem like the flowers of childhood, and which

her cousin had already silenced, for that gaunt woman loved to impress those under her with salutary awe.

The sewingwomen were delighted with Pierrette. Their work, however, was not carried on without many

"Stand still, my dear, and don't plague us; it is all for you and not for me," she would say to Pierrette when

the child was being measured. Sometimes it was, when Pierrette would ask the seamstress some question,

"Let Mademoiselle Borain do her work, and don't talk to her; it is not you who are paying for her time."

"Yes, do it firmly; I don't want to be making such an outfit as this every day."

Sylvie put the same spirit of emulation into Pierrette's outfit that she had formerly put into the house. She was

determined that her cousin should be as well dressed as Madame Garceland's little girl. She bought the child

fashionable boots of bronzed kid like those the little Tiphaines wore, very fine cotton stockings, a corset by

the best maker, a dress of blue reps, a pretty cape lined with white silk, all this that she, Sylvie, might hold

her own against the children of the women who had rejected her. The underclothes were quite in keeping with

the visible articles of dress, for Sylvie feared the examining eyes of the various mothers. Pierrette's chemises

were of fine Madapolam calico. Mademoiselle Borain had mentioned that the sub prefect's little girls wore

cambric drawers, embroidered and trimmed in the latest style. Pierrette had the same. Sylvie ordered for her a

charming little drawn bonnet of blue velvet lined with white satin, precisely like the one worn by Dr.

Thus attired, Pierrette was the most enchanting little girl in all Provins. On Sunday, after church, all the ladies

kissed her; Mesdames Tiphaine, Garceland, Galardon, Julliard, and the rest fell in love with the sweet little

Breton girl. This enthusiasm was deeply flattering to old Sylvie's selflove; she regarded it as less due to

Pierrette than to her own benevolence. She ended, however, in being affronted by her cousin's success.

Pierrette was constantly invited out, and Sylvie allowed her to go, always for the purpose of triumphing over

"those ladies." Pierrette was much in demand for games or little parties and dinners with their own little girls.

She had succeeded where the Rogrons had failed; and Mademoiselle Sylvie soon grew indignant that

Pierrette was asked to other children's houses when those children never came to hers. The artless little thing

did not conceal the pleasure she found in her visits to these ladies, whose affectionate manners contrasted

strangely with the harshness of her two cousins. A mother would have rejoiced in the happiness of her little

one, but the Rogrons had taken Pierrette for their own sakes, not for hers; their feelings, far from being

The handsome outfit, the fine Sunday dresses, and the everyday frocks were the beginning of Pierrette's

troubles. Like all children free to amuse themselves, who are accustomed to follow the dictates of their own

lively fancies, she was very hard on her clothes, her shoes, and above all on those embroidered drawers. A

mother when she reproves her child thinks only of the child; her voice is gentle; she does not raise it unless

driven to extremities, or when the child is much in fault. But here, in this great matter of Pierrette's clothes,

the cousins' money was the first consideration; their interests were to be thought of, not the child's. Children

have the perceptions of the canine race for the sentiments of those who rule them; they know instinctively

whether they are loved or only tolerated. Pure and innocent hearts are more distressed by shades of difference

than by contrasts; a child does not understand evil, but it knows when the instinct of the good and the

beautiful which nature has implanted in it is shocked. The lectures which Pierrette now drew upon herself on

propriety of behavior, modesty, and economy were merely the corollary of the one theme, "Pierrette will ruin

These perpetual faultfindings, which were destined to have a fatal result for the poor child, brought the two

celibates back to the old beaten track of their shopkeeping habits, from which their removal to Provins had

parted them, and in which their natures were now to expand and flourish. Accustomed in the old days to rule

and to make inquisitions, to order about and reprove their clerks sharply, Rogron and his sister had actually

suffered for want of victims. Little minds need to practise despotism to relieve their nerves, just as great souls

thirst for equality in friendship to exercise their hearts. Narrow natures expand by persecuting as much as

others through beneficence; they prove their power over their fellows by cruel tyranny as others do by loving

kindness; they simply go the way their temperaments drive them. Add to this the propulsion of selfinterest

Thenceforth Pierrette became a necessity to the lives of her cousins. From the day of her coming their minds

were occupied,first, with her outfit, and then with the novelty of a third presence. But every new thing, a

sentiment and even a tyranny, is moulded as time goes on into fresh shapes. Sylvie began by calling Pierrette

"my dear," or "little one." Then she abandoned the gentler terms for "Pierrette" only. Her reprimands, at first

only cross, became sharp and angry; and no sooner were their feet on the path of faultfinding than the

brother and sister made rapid strides. They were no longer bored to death! It was not their deliberate intention

to be wicked and cruel; it was simply the blind instinct of an imbecile tyranny. The pair believed they were

doing Pierrette a service, just as they had thought their harshness a benefit to their apprentices.

Pierrette, whose true and noble and extreme sensibility was the antipodes of the Rogrons' hardness, had a

dread of being scolded; it wounded her so sharply that the tears would instantly start in her beautiful, pure

eyes. She had a great struggle with herself before she could repress the enchanting sprightliness which made

her so great a favorite elsewhere. After a time she displayed it only in the homes of her little friends. By the

end of the first month she had learned to be passive in her cousins' house,so much so that Rogron one day

asked her if she was ill. At that sudden question, she ran to the end of the garden, and stood crying beside the

river, into which her tears may have fallen as she herself was about to fall into the social torrent.

One day, in spite of all her care, she tore her best reps frock at Madame Tiphaine's, where she was spending a

happy day. The poor child burst into tears, foreseeing the cruel things which would be said to her at home.

Questioned by her friends, she let fall a few words about her terrible cousin. Madame Tiphaine happened to

have some reps exactly like that of the frock, and she put in a new breadth herself. Mademoiselle Rogron

found out the trick, as she expressed it, which the little devil had played her. From that day forth she refused

The life the poor girl led in Provins was divided into three distinct phases. The first, already shown, in which

she had some joy mingled with the cold kindness of her cousins and their sharp reproaches, lasted three

months. Sylvie's refusal to let her go to her little friends, backed by the necessity of beginning her education,

ended the first phase of her life at Provins, the only period when that life was bearable to her.

These events, produced at the Rogrons by Pierrette's presence, were studied by Vinet and the colonel with the

caution of foxes preparing to enter a poultryyard and disturbed by seeing a strange fowl. They both called

from time to time,but seldom, so as not to alarm the old maid; they talked with Rogron under various

pretexts, and made themselves masters of his mind with an affectation of reserve and modesty which the

great Tartuffe himself would have respected. The colonel and the lawyer were spending the evening with

Rogron on the very day when Sylvie had refused in bitter language to let Pierrette go again to Madame

Tiphaine's, or elsewhere. Being told of this refusal the colonel and the lawyer looked at each other with an air

"Madame Tiphaine intended to insult you," said the lawyer. "We have long been warning Rogron of what

"What can you expect from the antinational party!" cried the colonel, twirling his moustache and

interrupting the lawyer. "But, mademoiselle, if we had tried to warn you from those people you might have

supposed we had some malicious motive in what we said. If you like a game of cards in the evening, why

don't you have it at home; why not play your boston here, in your own house? Is it impossible to fill the

places of those idiots, the Julliards and all the rest of them? Vinet and I know how to play boston, and we can

easily find a fourth. Vinet might present his wife to you; she is charming, and, what is more, a Chargeboeuf.

You will not be so exacting as those apes of the Upper town; you won't require a good little housewife, who

is compelled by the meanness of her family to do her own work, to dress like a duchess. Poor woman, she has

Sylvie Rogron showed her long yellow teeth as she smiled on the colonel, who bore the sight heroically and

"Why not? What do you suppose an old soldier of the Empire like me does with himself? And as for Vinet,

his evenings are always free. Besides, you'll have plenty of other visitors; I warrant you that," he added, with

"What you ought to do," said Vinet, "is to take an open stand against the ministerialists of Provins and form

an opposition to them. You would soon see how popular that would make you; you would have a society

about you at once. The Tiphaines would be furious at an opposition salon. Well, well, why not laugh at

others, if others laugh at you?and they do; the clique doesn't mince matters in talking about you."

In the provinces there is always a valve or a faucet through which gossip leaks from one social set to another.

Vinet knew all the slurs cast upon the Rogrons in the salons from which they were now excluded. The

deputyjudge and archaeologist Desfondrilles belonged to neither party. With other independents like him,

he repeated what he heard on both sides and Vinet made the most of it. The lawyer's spiteful tongue put

venom into Madame Tiphaine's speeches, and by showing Rogron and Sylvie the ridicule they had brought

upon themselves he roused an undying spirit of hatred in those bitter natures, which needed an object for their

A few days later Vinet brought his wife, a wellbred woman, neither pretty nor plain, timid, very gentle, and

deeply conscious of her false position. Madame Vinet was faircomplexioned, faded by the cares of her poor

household, and very simply dressed. No woman could have pleased Sylvie more. Madame Vinet endured her

airs, and bent before them like one accustomed to subjection. On the poor woman's rounded brow and

delicately timid cheek and in her slow and gentle glance, were the traces of deep reflection, of those

perceptive thoughts which women who are accustomed to suffer bury in total silence.

The influence of the colonel (who now displayed to Sylvie the graces of a courtier, in marked contradiction to

his usual military brusqueness), together with that of the astute Vinet, was soon to harm the Breton child.

Shut up in the house, no longer allowed to go out except in company with her old cousin, Pierrette, that pretty

little squirrel, was at the mercy of the incessant cry, "Don't touch that, child, let that alone!" She was

perpetually being lectured on her carriage and behavior; if she stooped or rounded her shoulders her cousin

would call to her to be as erect as herself (Sylvie was rigid as a soldier presenting arms to his colonel);

sometimes indeed the illnatured old maid enforced the order by slaps on the back to make the girl straighten

Thus the free and joyous little child of the Marais learned by degrees to repress all liveliness and to make

One evening, which marked the beginning of Pierrette's second phase of life in her cousin's house, the child,

whom the three guests had not seen during the evening, came into the room to kiss her relatives and say

goodnight to the company. Sylvie turned her cheek coldly to the pretty creature, as if to avoid kissing her.

The motion was so cruelly significant that the tears sprang to Pierrette's eyes.

"My rich cousin isn't as kind to me as my poor grandmother was," sobbed Pierrette.

"Your grandmother took your money," said Sylvie, "and your cousin will leave you hers."

Vinet gave his wife the terrible, fixed, cold look with which men enforce their absolute dominion. The

hapless helot, punished incessantly for not having the one thing that was wanted of her, a fortune, took up her

"What has she done?" said Sylvie, throwing up her head with such violence that the yellow wallflowers in

her cap nodded. "She is always looking about to annoy us. She opened my watch to see the inside, and

meddled with the wheel and broke the mainspring. Mademoiselle pays no heed to what is said to her. I am all

day long telling her to take care of things, and I might just as well talk to that lamp."

Pierrette, ashamed at being reproved before strangers, crept softly out of the room.

Again she was silenced by a look from her husband, who had been careful to tell her nothing of his own or

"This is what comes of taking charge of other people's children!" cried the colonel. "You may still have some

Sylvie smiled agreeably on the colonel. For the first time in her life she met a man to whom the idea that she

"Madame Vinet is right," cried Rogron; "perhaps teaching would keep Pierrette quiet. A master wouldn't cost

The colonel's remark so preoccupied Sylvie that she made no answer to her brother.

"If you are willing to be security for that opposition journal I was talking to you about," said Vinet, "you will

find an excellent master for the little cousin in the managing editor; we intend to engage that poor

schoolmaster who lost his employment through the encroachments of the clergy. My wife is right; Pierrette is

"I thought you were a baron," said Sylvie to the colonel, while the cards were being dealt, and after a long

"Yes; but when I was made baron, in 1814, after the battle of Nangis, where my regiment performed

miracles, I had money and influence enough to secure the rank. But now my barony is like the grade of

"If you will secure my endorsement by a mortgage," said Rogron, answering Vinet after long consideration,

"That can easily be arranged," said Vinet. "The new paper will soon restore the colonel's rights, and make

While his wife was dealing and Vinet himself explaining the importance they would all gain by the

publication of an independent newspaper, Pierrette was dissolved in tears; her heart and her mind were one in

this matter; she felt and knew that her cousin was more to blame than she was. The little country girl

instinctively understood that charity and benevolence ought to be a complete offering. She hated her

handsome frocks and all the things that were made for her; she was forced to pay too dearly for such benefits.

She wept with vexation at having given cause for complaint against her, and resolved to behave in future in

such a way as to compel her cousins to find no further fault with her. The thought then came into her mind

how grand Brigaut had been in giving her all his savings without a word. Poor child! she fancied her troubles

were now at their worst; she little knew that other misfortunes were even now being planned for her in the

A few days later Pierrette had a writingmaster. She was taught to read, write, and cipher. Enormous injury

was thus supposed to be done to the Rogrons' house. Inkspots were found on the tables, on the furniture, on

Pierrette's clothes; copybooks and pens were left about; sand was scattered everywhere, books were torn and

dog'seared as the result of these lessons. She was told in harsh terms that she would have to earn her own

living, and not be a burden to others. As she listened to these cruel remarks Pierrette's throat contracted

violently with acute pain, her heart throbbed. She was forced to restrain her tears, or she was scolded for

weeping and told it was an insult to the kindness of her magnanimous cousins. Rogron had found the life that

suited him. He scolded Pierrette as he used to scold his clerks; he would call her when at play, and compel

her to study; he made her repeat her lessons, and became himself the almost savage master of the poor child.

Sylvie, on her side, considered it a duty to teach Pierrette the little that she knew herself about women's work.

Neither Rogron nor his sister had the slightest softness in their natures. Their narrow minds, which found real

pleasure in worrying the poor child, passed insensibly from outward kindness to extreme severity. This

severity was necessitated, they believed, by what they called the selfwill of the child, which had not been

broken when young and was very obstinate. Her masters were ignorant how to give to their instructions a

form suited to the intelligence of the pupil,a thing, by the bye, which marks the difference between public

and private education. The fault was far less with Pierrette than with her cousins. It took her an infinite length

of time to learn the rudiments. She was called stupid and dull, clumsy and awkward for mere nothings.

Incessantly abused in words, the child suffered still more from the harsh looks of her cousins. She acquired

the doltish ways of a sheep; she dared not do anything of her own impulse, for all she did was misinterpreted,

misjudged, and illreceived. In all things she awaited silently the good pleasure and the orders of her cousins,

keeping her thoughts within her own mind and sheltering herself behind a passive obedience. Her brilliant

colors began to fade. Sometimes she complained of feeling ill. When her cousin asked, "Where?" the poor

"Nonsense! who ever heard of any one suffering everywhere?" cried Sylvie. "If you suffered everywhere

"People suffer in their chests," said Rogron, who liked to hear himself harangue, "or they have toothache,

headache, pains in their feet or stomach, but no one has pains everywhere. What do you mean by

everywhere? I can tell you; 'everywhere' means nowhere. Don't you know what you are doing?you are

Pierrette ended by total silence, seeing how all her girlish remarks, the flowers of her dawning intelligence,

were replied to with ignorant commonplaces which her natural good sense told her were ridiculous.

The only person who did not bruise the delicate little flower was the fat servant woman, Adele. Adele would

go up and warm her bed,doing it on the sly after a certain evening when Sylvie had scolded her for giving

"Children should be hardened, to give them strong constitutions. Am I and my brother the worse for it?" said

Sylvie. "You'll make Pierrette a peakling"; this was a word in the Rogron vocabulary which meant a puny and

The naturally endearing ways of the angelic child were treated as dissimulation. The fresh, pure blossoms of

affection which bloomed instinctively in that young soul were pitilessly crushed. Pierrette suffered many a

cruel blow on the tender flesh of her heart. If she tried to soften those ferocious natures by innocent, coaxing

wiles they accused her of doing it with an object. "Tell me at once what you want?" Rogron would say,

Neither brother nor sister believed in affection, and Pierrette's whole being was affection. Colonel Gouraud,

anxious to please Mademoiselle Rogron, approved of all she did about Pierrette. Vinet also encouraged them

in what they said against her. He attributed all her socalled misdeeds to the obstinacy of the Breton

character, and declared that no power, no will, could ever conquer it. Rogron and his sister were so shrewdly

flattered by the two manoeuvrers that the former agreed to go security for the "Courrier de Provins," and the

On this, the colonel and lawyer took the field. They got a hundred shares, of five hundred francs each, taken

among the farmers and others called independents, and also among those who had bought lands of the

national domains,whose fears they worked upon. They even extended their operations throughout the

department and along its borders. Each shareholder of course subscribed to the paper. The judicial

advertisements were divided between the "Beehive" and the "Courrier." The first issue of the latter

contained a pompous eulogy on Rogron. He was presented to the community as the Laffitte of Provins. The

public mind having thus received an impetus in this new direction, it was manifest, of course, that the coming

elections would be contested. Madame Tiphaine, whose highest hope was to take her husband to Paris as

deputy, was in despair. After reading an article in the new paper aimed at her and at Julliard junior, she

remarked: "Unfortunately for me, I forgot that there is always a scoundrel close to a dupe, and that fools are

As soon as the "Courrier" was fairly launched on a radius of fifty miles, Vinet bought a new coat and decent

boots, waistcoats, and trousers. He set up the gray slouch hat sacred to liberals, and showed his linen. His

wife took a servant, and appeared in public dressed as the wife of a prominent man should be; her caps were

pretty. Vinet proved gratefulout of policy. He and his friend Cournant, the liberal notary and the rival of

the ministerial notary Auffray, became the close advisers of the Rogrons, to whom they were able to do a

couple of signal services. The leases granted by old Rogron to their father in 1815, when matters were at a

low ebb, were about to expire. Horticulture and vegetable gardening had developed enormously in the

neighborhood of Provins. The lawyer and notary set to work to enable the Rogrons to increase their rentals.

Vinet won two lawsuits against two districts on a question of planting trees, which involved five hundred

poplars. The proceeds of the poplars, added to the savings of the brother and sister, who for the last three

years had laid by six thousand a year at high interest, was wisely invested in the purchase of improved lands.

Vinet also undertook and carried out the ejectment of certain peasants to whom the elder Rogron had lent

money on their farms, and who had strained every nerve to pay off the debt, but in vain. The cost of the

Rogrons' fine house was thus in a measure recouped. Their landed property, lying around Provins and chosen

by their father with the sagacious eye of an innkeeper, was divided into small holdings, the largest of which

did not exceed five acres, and rented to safe tenants, men who owned other parcels of land, that were ample

security for their leases. These investments brought in, by 1826, five thousand francs a year. Taxes were

charged to the tenants, and there were no buildings needing insurance or repairs.

By the end of the second period of Pierrette's stay in Provins life had become so hard for her, the cold

indifference of all who came to the house, the silly faultfinding, and the total absence of affection on the

part of her cousins grew so bitter, she was conscious of a chill dampness like that of a grave creeping round

her, that the bold idea of escaping, on foot and without money, to Brittany and to her grandparents took

possession of her mind. Two events hindered her from attempting it. Old Lorrain died, and Rogron was

appointed guardian of his little cousin. If the grandmother had died first, we may believe that Rogron, advised

by Vinet, would have claimed Pierrette's eight thousand francs and reduced the old man to penury.

"You may, perhaps, inherit from Pierrette," said Vinet, with a horrid smile. "Who knows who may live and

Enlightened by that remark, Rogron gave old Madame Lorrain no peace until she had secured to Pierrette the

Pierrette was deeply shocked by these events. She was on the point of making her first communion,another

reason for resigning the hope of escape from Provins. This ceremony, simple and customary as it was, led to

great changes in the Rogron household. Sylvie learned that Monsieur le cure Peroux was instructing the little

Julliards, Lesourds, Garcelands, and the rest. She therefore made it a point of honor that Pierrette should be

instructed by the vicar himself, Monsieur Habert, a priest who was thought to belong to the Congregation,

very zealous for the interests of the Church, and much feared in Provins,a man who hid a vast ambition

beneath the austerity of stern principles. The sister of this priest, an unmarried woman about thirty years of

age, kept a school for young ladies. Brother and sister looked alike; both were thin, yellow, blackhaired, and

Like a true Breton girl, cradled in the practices and poetry of Catholicism, Pierrette opened her heart and ears

to the words of this imposing priest. Sufferings predispose the mind to devotion, and nearly all young girls,

impelled by instinctive tenderness, are inclined to mysticism, the deepest aspect of religion. The priest found

good soil in which to sow the seed of the Gospel and the dogmas of the Church. He completely changed the

current of the girl's thoughts. Pierrette loved Jesus Christ in the light in which he is presented to young girls at

the time of their first communion, as a celestial bridegroom; her physical and moral sufferings gained a

meaning for her; she saw the finger of God in all things. Her soul, so cruelly hurt although she could not

accuse her cousins of actual wrong, took refuge in that sphere to which all sufferers fly on the wings of the

cardinal virtues,Faith, Hope, Charity. She abandoned her thoughts of escape. Sylvie, surprised by the

transformation Monsieur Habert had effected in Pierrette, was curious to know how it had been done. And it

thus came about that the austere priest, while preparing Pierrette for her first communion, also won to God

the hitherto erring soul of Mademoiselle Sylvie. Sylvie became pious. Jerome Rogron, on whom the

socalled Jesuit could get no grip (for just then the influence of His Majesty the late Constitutionnel the First

was more powerful over weaklings than the influence of the Church), Jerome Rogron remained faithful to

Mademoiselle Rogron naturally made the acquaintance of Mademoiselle Habert, with whom she sympathized

deeply. The two spinsters loved each other as sisters. Mademoiselle Habert offered to take Pierrette into her

school to spare Sylvie the annoyance of her education; but the brother and sister both declared that Pierrette's

absence would make the house too lonely; their attachment to their little cousin seemed excessive.

When Gouraud and Vinet became aware of the advent of Mademoiselle Habert on the scene they concluded

that the ambitious priest her brother had the same matrimonial plan for his sister that the colonel was forming

"With that old sorceress of a schoolmistress," cried the colonel, twirling his moustache.

So thorough an old maid as Sylvie was certain to make good progress in the way of salvation. The influence

of the priest would as certainly increase, and in the end affect Rogron, over whom Sylvie had great power.

The two Liberals, who were naturally alarmed, saw plainly that if the priest were resolved to marry his sister

to Rogron (a far more suitable marriage than that of Sylvie to the colonel) he could then drive Sylvie in

extreme devotion to the Church, and put Pierrette in a convent. They might therefore lose eighteen months'

labor in flattery and meannesses of all sorts. Their minds were suddenly filled with a bitter, silent hatred to

the priest and his sister, though they felt the necessity of living on good terms with them in order to track

their manoeuvres. Monsieur and Mademoiselle Habert, who could play both whist and boston, now came

every evening to the Rogrons. The assiduity of the one pair induced the assiduity of the other. The colonel

and lawyer felt that they were pitted against adversaries who were fully as strong as they,a presentiment

that was shared by the priest and his sister. The situation soon became that of a battle field. Precisely as the

colonel was enabling Sylvie to taste the unhopedfor joys of being sought in marriage, so Mademoiselle

Habert was enveloping the timid Rogron in the cottonwool of her attentions, words, and glances. Neither

side could utter that grand word of statesmanship, "Let us divide!" for each wanted the whole prey.

The two clever foxes of the Opposition made the mistake of pulling the first trigger. Vinet, under the spur of

selfinterest, bethought himself of his wife's only friends, and looked up Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf and

her mother. The two women were living in poverty at Troyes on two thousand francs a year. Mademoiselle

Bathilde de Chargeboeuf was one of those fine creatures who believe in marriage for love up to their

twentyfifth year, and change their opinion when they find themselves still unmarried. Vinet managed to

persuade Madame de Chargeboeuf to join her means to his and live with his family in Provins, where

Bathilde, he assured her, could marry a fool named Rogron, and, clever as she was, take her place in the best

The arrival of Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf in the lawyer's household was a great

reinforcement for the liberal party; and it created consternation among the aristocrats of Provins and also in

the Tiphaine clique. Madame de Breautey, horrified to see two women of rank so misled, begged them to

come to her. She was shocked that the royalists of Troyes had so neglected the mother and daughter, whose

"How is it that no old country gentleman has married that dear girl, who is cut out for a lady of the manor?"

she said. "They have let her run to seed, and now she is to be flung at the head of a Rogron!"

She ransacked the whole department but did not succeed in finding any gentleman willing to marry a girl

whose mother had only two thousand francs a year. The "clique" and the subprefect also looked about them

with the same object, but they were all too late. Madame de Breautey made terrible charges against the

selfishness which degraded France, the consequence, she said, of materialism, and of the importance now

given by the laws to money: nobility was no longer of value! nor beauty either! Such creatures as the

Bathilde de Chargeboeuf had not only the incontestable superiority of beauty over her rival, but that of dress

as well. She was dazzlingly fair. At twentyfive her shoulders were fully developed, and the curves of her

beautiful figure were exquisite. The roundness of her throat, the purity of its lines, the wealth of her golden

hair, the charming grace of her smile, the distinguished carriage of her head, the character of her features, the

fine eyes finely placed beneath a wellformed brow, her every motion, noble and highbred, and her light

and graceful figure,all were in harmony. Her hands were beautiful, and her feet slender. Health gave her,

perhaps, too much the look of a handsome barmaid. "But that can't be a defect in the eyes of a Rogron,"

sighed Madame Tiphaine. Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf's dress when she made her first appearance in

Provins at the Rogrons' house was very simple. Her brown merino gown edged with green embroidery was

worn lownecked; but a tulle fichu, carefully drawn down by hidden strings, covered her neck and shoulders,

though it opened a little in front, where its folds were caught together with a sevigne. Beneath this delicate

fabric Bathilde's beauties seemed all the more enticing and coquettish. She took off her velvet bonnet and her

shawl on arriving, and showed her pretty ears adorned with what were then called "eardrops" in gold. She

wore a little jeannettea black velvet ribbon with a heart attachedround her throat, where it shone like the

jet ring which fantastic nature had fastened round the tail of a white angora cat. She knew all the little tricks

of a girl who seeks to marry; her fingers arranged her curls which were not in the least out of order; she

entreated Rogron to fasten a cuffbutton, thus showing him her wrist, a request which that dazzled fool

rudely refused, hiding his emotions under the mask of indifference. The timidity of the only love he was ever

to feel in the whole course of his life took an external appearance of dislike. Sylvie and her friend Celeste

Habert were deceived by it; not so Vinet, the wise head of this doltish circle, among whom no one really

On the other hand the colonel was behaving to Sylvie very much as Bathilde behaved to Rogron. He put on a

clean shirt every evening and wore velvet stocks, which set off his martial features and the spotless white of

his collar. He adopted the fashion of white pique waistcoats, and caused to be made for him a new surtout of

blue cloth, on which his red rosette glowed finely; all this under pretext of doing honor to the new guests

Madame and Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf. He even refrained from smoking for two hours previous to his

appearance in the Rogrons' salon. His grizzled hair was brushed in a waving line across a cranium which was

ochre in tone. He assumed the air and manner of a party leader, of a man who was preparing to drive out the

The satanic lawyer and the wily colonel played the priest and his sister a more cruel trick than even the

importation of the beautiful Madame de Chargeboeuf, who was considered by all the Liberal party and by

Madame de Breautey and her aristocratic circle to be far handsomer than Madame Tiphaine. These two great

statesmen of the little provincial town made everybody believe that the priest was in sympathy with their

ideas; so that before long Provins began to talk of him as a liberal ecclesiastic. As soon as this news reached

the bishop Monsieur Habert was sent for and admonished to cease his visits to the Rogrons; but his sister

continued to go there. Thus the salon Rogron became a fixed fact and a constituted power.

Before the year was out political intrigues were not less lively than the matrimonial schemes of the Rogron

salon. While the selfish interests hidden in these hearts were struggling in deadly combat the events which

resulted from them had a fatal celebrity. Everybody knows that the Villele ministry was overthrown by the

elections of 1826. Vinet, the Liberal candidate at Provins, who had borrowed money of his notary to buy a

domain which made him eligible for election, came very near defeating Monsieur Tiphaine, who saved his

election by only two votes. The headquarters of the Liberals was the Rogron salon; among the habitues were

the notary Cournant and his wife, and Doctor Neraud, whose youth was said to have been stormy, but who

now took a serious view of life; he gave himself up to study and was, according to all Liberals, a far more

capable man than Monsieur Martener, the aristocratic physician. As for the Rogrons, they no more

understood their present triumph than they had formerly understood their ostracism.

The beautiful Bathilde, to whom Vinet had explained Pierrette as an enemy, was extremely disdainful to the

girl. It seemed as though everybody's selfish schemes demanded the humiliation of that poor victim. Madame

Vinet could do nothing for her, ground as she herself was beneath those implacable selfinterests which the

lawyer's wife had come at last to see and comprehend. Her husband's imperious will had alone taken her to

the Rogron's house, where she had suffered much at the harsh treatment of the pretty little creature, who

would often press up against her as if divining her secret thoughts, sometimes asking the poor lady to show

her a stitch in knitting or to teach her a bit of embroidery. The child proved in return that if she were treated

gently she would understand what was taught her, and succeed in what she tried to do quite marvellously. But

Madame Vinet was soon no longer necessary to her husband's plans, and after the arrival of Madame and

Sylvie, who now indulged in the idea of marrying, began to consider Pierrette as an obstacle. The girl was

nearly fourteen; the pallid whiteness of her skin, a symptom of illness entirely overlooked by the ignorant old

maid, made her exquisitely lovely. Sylvie took it into her head to balance the cost which Pierrette had been to

them by making a servant of her. All the habitues of the house to whom she spoke of the matter advised that

she should send away Adele. Why shouldn't Pierrette take care of the house and cook? If there was too much

work at any time Mademoiselle Rogron could easily employ the colonel's womanofallwork, an excellent

cook and a most respectable person. Pierrette ought to learn how to cook, and rub floors, and sweep, said the

lawyer; every girl should be taught to keep house properly and go to market and know the price of things.

The poor little soul, whose selfdevotion was equal to her generosity, offered herself willingly, pleased to

think that she could earn the bitter bread which she ate in that house. Adele was sent away, and Pierrette thus

In spite of the poor child's strength of heart she was henceforth crushed down physically as well as mentally.

Her cousins had less consideration for her than for a servant; she belonged to them! She was scolded for mere

nothings, for an atom of dust left on a glass globe or a marble mantelpiece. The handsome ornaments she had

once admired now became odious to her. No matter how she strove to do right, her inexorable cousins always

found something to reprove in whatever she did. In the course of two years Pierrette never received the

slightest praise, or heard a kindly word. Happiness for her lay in not being scolded. She bore with angelic

patience the morose illhumor of the two celibates, to whom all tender feelings were absolutely unknown,

Such a life for a young girl, pressed as it were between the two chops of a vise, increased her illness. She

began to feel violent internal distresses, secret pangs so sudden in their attacks that her strength was

undermined and her natural development arrested. By slow degrees and through dreadful, though hidden

sufferings, the poor child came to the state in which the companion of her childhood found her when he sang

Before we relate the domestic drama which the coming of Jacques Brigaut was destined to bring about in the

Rogron family it is best to explain how the lad came to be in Provins; for he is, as it were, a somewhat mute

When he ran from the house Brigaut was not only frightened by Pierrette's gesture, he was horrified by the

change he saw in his little friend. He could scarcely recognize the voice, the eyes, the gestures that were once

so lively, gay, and withal so tender. When he had gained some distance from the house his legs began to

tremble under him; hot flushes ran down his back. He had seen the shadow of Pierrette, but not Pierrette

herself! The lad climbed to the Upper town till he found a spot from which he could see the square and the

house where Pierrette lived. He gazed at it mournfully, lost in many thoughts, as though he were entering

some grief of which he could not see the end. Pierrette was ill; she was not happy; she pined for

Brittanywhat was the matter with her? All these questions passed and repassed through his heart and rent

it, revealing to his own soul the extent of his love for his little adopted sister.

It is extremely rare to find a passion existing between two children of opposite sexes. The charming story of

Paul and Virginia does not, any more than this of Pierrette and Brigaut, answer the question put by that

strange moral fact. Modern history offers only the illustrious instance of the Marchesa di Pescara and her

husband. Destined to marry by their parents from their earliest years, they adored each other and were

married, and their union gave to the sixteenth century the noble spectacle of a perfect conjugal love without a

flaw. When the marchesa became a widow at the age of thirtyfour, beautiful, intellectually brilliant,

universally adored, she refused to marry sovereigns and buried herself in a convent, seeing and knowing

thenceforth only nuns. Such was the perfect love that suddenly developed itself in the heart of the Breton

workman. Pierrette and he had often protected each other; with what bliss had he given her the money for her

journey; he had almost killed himself by running after the diligence when she left him. Pierrette had known

nothing of all that; but for him the recollection had warmed and comforted the cold, hard life he had led for

the last three years. For Pierrette's sake he had struggled to improve himself; he had learned his trade for

Pierrette; he had come to Paris for Pierrette, intending to make his fortune for her. After spending a fortnight

in the city, he had not been able to hold out against the desire to see her, and he had walked from Saturday

night to Monday morning. He intended to return to Paris; but the moving sight of his little friend nailed him

to Provins. A wonderful magnetism (still denied in spite of many proofs) acted upon him without his

knowledge. Tears rolled from his eyes when they rose in hers. If to her he was Brittany and her happy

At sixteen years of age Brigaut did not yet know how to draw or to model a cornice; he was ignorant of

much, but he had earned, by piece work done in the leisure of his apprenticeship, some four or five francs a

day. On this he could live in Provins and be near Pierrette; he would choose the best cabinetmaker in the

town, and learn the rest of his trade in working for him, and thus keep watch over his darling.

Brigaut's mind was made up as he sat there thinking. He went back to Paris and fetched his certificate, tools,

and baggage, and three days later he was a journeyman in the establishment of Monsieur Frappier, the best

cabinetmaker in Provins. Active, steady workmen, not given to junketing and taverns, are so rare that

masters hold to young men like Brigaut when they find them. To end Brigaut's history on this point, we will

say here that by the end of the month he was made foreman, and was fed and lodged by Frappier, who taught

him arithmetic and line drawing. The house and shop were in the Grand'Rue, not a hundred feet from the

Brigaut buried his love in his heart and committed no imprudence. He made Madame Frappier tell him all she

knew about the Rogrons. Among other things, she related to him the way in which their father had laid hands

on the property of old Auffray, Pierrette's grandfather. Brigaut obtained other information as to the character

of the brother and sister. He met Pierrette sometimes in the market with her cousin, and shuddered to see the

heavy basket she was carrying on her arm. On Sundays he went to church to look for her, dressed in her best

clothes. There, for the first time, he became aware that Pierrette was Mademoiselle Lorrain. Pierrette saw him

and made him a hasty sign to keep out of sight. To him, there was a world of things in that little gesture, as

there had been, a fortnight earlier, in the sign by which she told him from her window to run away. Ah! what

a fortune he must make in the coming ten years in order to marry his little friend, to whom, he was told, the

Rogrons were to leave their house, a hundred acres of land, and twelve thousand francs a year, not counting

The persevering Breton was determined to be thoroughly educated for his trade, and he set about acquiring all

the knowledge that he lacked. As long as only the principles of his work were concerned he could learn those

in Provins as well as in Paris, and thus remain near Pierrette, to whom he now became anxious to explain his

projects and the sort of protection she could rely on from him. He was determined to know the reason of her

pallor, and of the debility which was beginning to appear in the organ which is always the last to show the

signs of failing life, namely the eyes; he would know, too, the cause of the sufferings which gave her that

look as though death were near and she might drop at any moment beneath its scythe. The two signs, the two

gesturesnot denying their friendship but imploring caution alarmed the young Breton. Evidently

Pierrette wished him to wait and not attempt to see her; otherwise there was danger, there was peril for her.

As she left the church she was able to give him one look, and Brigaut saw that her eyes were full of tears. But

he could have sooner squared the circle than have guessed what had happened in the Rogrons' house during

It was not without keen apprehension that Pierrette came downstairs on the morning after Brigaut had

invaded her morning dreams like another dream. She was certain that her cousin Sylvie must have heard the

song, or she would not have risen and opened her window; but Pierrette was ignorant of the powerful reasons

that made the old maid so alert. For the last eight days, strange events and bitter feelings agitated the minds of

the chief personages who frequented the Rogron salon. These hidden matters, carefully concealed by all

concerned, were destined to fall in their results like an avalanche on Pierrette. Such mysterious things, which

we ought perhaps to call the putrescence of the human heart, lie at the base of the greatest revolutions,

political, social or domestic; but in telling of them it is desirable to explain that their subtle significance

cannot be given in a matter offact narrative. These secret schemes and calculations do not show

themselves as brutally and undisguisedly while taking place as they must when the history of them is related.

To set down in writing the circumlocutions, oratorical precautions, protracted conversations, and honeyed

words glossed over the venom of intentions, would make as long a book as that magnificent poem called

Mademoiselle Habert and Mademoiselle Sylvie were equally desirous of marrying, but one was ten years

older than the other, and the probabilities of life allowed Celeste Habert to expect that her children would

inherit all the Rogron property. Sylvie was fortytwo, an age at which marriage is beset by perils. In

confiding to each other their ideas, Celeste, instigated by her vindictive brother the priest, enlightened Sylvie

as to the dangers she would incur. Sylvie trembled; she was terribly afraid of death, an idea which shakes all

celibates to their centre. But just at this time the Martignac ministry came into power,a Liberal victory

which overthrew the Villele administration. The Vinet party now carried their heads high in Provins. Vinet

himself became a personage. The Liberals prophesied his advancement; he would certainly be deputy and

attorneygeneral. As for the colonel, he would be made mayor of Provins. Ah, to reign as Madame

Garceland, the wife of the present mayor, now reigned! Sylvie could not hold out against that hope; she

determined to consult a doctor, though the proceeding would only cover her with ridicule. To consult

Monsieur Neraud, the Liberal physician and the rival of Monsieur Martener, would be a blunder. Celeste

Habert offered to hide Sylvie in her dressingroom while she herself consulted Monsieur Martener, the

physician of her establishment, on this difficult matter. Whether Martener was, or was not, Celeste's

accomplice need not be discovered; at any rate, he told his client that even at thirty the danger, though slight,

"Oh, that's another thing," said Monsieur Martener. "Successful childbirth is then one of those miracles which

The doctor answered with a terrifying pathological description; he explained that the elasticity given by

nature to youthful muscles and bones did not exist at a later age, especially in women whose lives were

"Not unless she waits some years," replied the doctor. "But then, of course, it is not marriage, it is only an

The result of the interview, clearly, seriously, scientifically and sensibly stated, was that an unmarried woman

would make a great mistake in marrying after forty. When the doctor had departed Mademoiselle Celeste

found Sylvie in a frightful state, green and yellow, and with the pupils of her eyes dilated.

"Well, then, wait!" cried Mademoiselle Habert, Jesuitically, aware that time would rid her of the colonel.

Sylvie's new devotion to the church warned her that the morality of such a marriage might be doubtful. She

accordingly sounded her conscience in the confessional. The stern priest explained the opinions of the

Church, which sees in marriage only the propagation of humanity, and rebukes second marriages and all

passions but those with a social purpose. Sylvie's perplexities were great. These internal struggles gave

extraordinary force to her passion, investing it with that inexplicable attraction which, from the days of Eve,

the thing forbidden possesses for women. Mademoiselle Rogron's perturbation did not escape the lynxeyed

One evening, after the game had ended, Vinet approached his dear friend Sylvie, took her hand, and led her to

She nodded sadly. The lawyer let the others depart; Rogron walked home with the Chargeboeufs, and when

The foxy lawyer was more decided in his opinion than even the doctor. He advised marriage in ten years.

Inwardly he was vowing that the whole Rogron fortune should go to Bathilde. He rubbed his hands, his

pinched lips closed more tightly as he hurried home. The influence exercised by Monsieur Habert, physician

of the soul, and by Vinet, doctor of the purse, balanced each other perfectly. Rogron had no piety in him; so

On discovering the victory obtained by Celeste, in her anxiety to marry Rogron herself, over Sylvie, torn

between the fear of death and the joy of being baronness and mayoress, the lawyer saw his chance of driving

the colonel from the battlefield. He knew Rogron well enough to be certain he could marry him to Bathilde;

Jerome had already succumbed inwardly to her charms, and Vinet knew that the first time the pair were alone

together the marriage would be settled. Rogron had reached the point of keeping his eyes fixed on Celeste, so

much did he fear to look at Bathilde. Vinet had now possessed himself of Sylvie's secrets, and saw the force

with which she loved the colonel. He fully understood the struggle of such a passion in the heart of an old

maid who was also in the grasp of religious emotion, and he saw his way to rid himself of Pierrette and the

The next day, after the court had risen, Vinet met the colonel and Rogron talking a walk together, according

Whenever the three men were seen in company the whole town talked of it. This triumvirate, held in horror

by the subprefect, the magistracy, and the Tiphaine clique, was, on the other hand, a source of pride and

vanity to the Liberals of Provins. Vinet was sole editor of the "Courrier" and the head of the party; the

colonel, the working manager, was its arm; Rogron, by means of his purse, its nerves. The Tiphaines declared

that the three men were always plotting evil to the government; the Liberals admired them as the defenders of

the people. When Rogron turned to go home, recalled by a sense of his dinnerhour, Vinet stopped the

"Well, colonel," he said, "I am going to take a fearful load off your shoulders; you can do better than marry

Sylvie; if you play your cards properly you can marry that little Pierrette in two years' time."

"Colonel," said Vinet, gravely, "Pierrette is a charming creature; with her you can be happy for the rest of

your life; your health is so sound that the difference in your ages won't seem disproportionate. But, all the

same, you mustn't think it an easy thing to change a dreadful fate to a pleasant one. To turn a woman who

loves you into a friend and confidant is as perilous a business as crossing a river under fire of the enemy.

Cavalry colonel as you are, and daring too, you must study the position and manoeuvre your forces with the

same wisdom you have displayed hitherto, and which has won us our present position. If I get to be

attorneygeneral you shall command the department. Oh! if you had been an elector we should be further

advanced than we are now; I should have bought the votes of those two clerks by threatening them with the

The colonel had long been thinking about Pierrette, but he concealed his thoughts with the utmost

dissimulation. His roughness to the child was only a mask; but she could not understand why the man who

claimed to be her father's old comrade should usually treat her so ill, when sometimes, if he met her alone, he

would chuck her under the chin and give her a friendly kiss. But after the conversation with Vinet relating to

Sylvie's fears of marriage Gouraud began to seek opportunities to find Pierrette alone; the rough colonel

made himself as soft as a cat; he told her how brave her father was and what a misfortune it had been for her

A few days before Brigaut's arrival Sylvie had come suddenly upon Gouraud and Pierrette talking together.

Instantly, jealousy rushed into her heart with monastic violence. Jealousy, eminently credulous and

suspicious, is the passion in which fancy has most freedom, but for all that it does not give a person

intelligence; on the contrary, it hinders them from having any; and in Sylvie's case jealousy only filled her

with fantastic ideas. When (a few mornings later) she heard Brigaut's ditty, she jumped to the conclusion that

the man who had used the words "Madam' le mariee," addressing them to Pierrette, must be the colonel. She

was certain she was right, for she had noticed for a week past a change in his manners. He was the only man

who, in her solitary life, had ever paid her any attention. Consequently she watched him with all her eyes, all

her mind; and by giving herself up to hopes that were sometimes flourishing, sometimes blighted, she had

brought the matter to such enormous proportions that she saw all things in a mental mirage. To use a common

but excellent expression, by dint of looking intently she saw nothing. Alternately she repelled, admitted, and

conquered the supposition of this rivalry. She compared herself with Pierrette; she was fortytwo years old,

with gray hair; Pierrette was delicately fair, with eyes soft enough to warm a withered heart. She had heard it

said that men of fifty were apt to love young girls of just that kind. Before the colonel had come regularly to

the house Sylvie had heard in the Tiphaines' salon strange stories of his life and morals. Old maids preserve

in their loveaffairs the exaggerated Platonic sentiments which young girls of twenty are wont to profess;

they hold to these fixed doctrines like all who have little experience of life and no personal knowledge of how

great social forces modify, impair, and bring to nought such grand and noble ideas. The mere thought of

being jilted by the colonel was torture to Sylvie's brain. She lay in her bed going over and over her own

desires, Pierrette's conduct, and the song which had awakened her with the word "marriage." Like the fool

she was, instead of looking through the blinds to see the lover, she opened her window without reflecting that

Pierrette would hear her. If she had had the common instinct of a spy she would have seen Brigaut, and the

It was Pierrette's duty, weak as she was, to take down the bars that closed the wooden shutters of the kitchen,

which she opened and fastened back; then she opened in like manner the glass door leading from the corridor

to the garden. She took the various brooms that were used for sweeping the carpets, the diningroom, the

passages and stairs, together with the other utensils, with a care and particularity which no servant, not even a

Dutchwoman, gives to her work. She hated reproof. Happiness for her was in seeing the cold blue pallid eyes

of her cousin, not satisfied (that they never were), but calm, after glancing about her with the look of an

owner,that wonderful glance which sees what escapes even the most vigilant eyes of others. Pierrette's skin

was moist with her labor when she returned to the kitchen to put it in order, and light the stove that she might

carry up hot water to her two cousins (a luxury she never had for herself) and the means of lighting fires in

their rooms. After this she laid the table for breakfast and lit the stove in the diningroom. For all these

various fires she had to fetch wood and kindling from the cellar, leaving the warm rooms for a damp and

chilly atmosphere. Such sudden transitions, made with the quickness of youth, often to escape a harsh word

or obey an order, aggravated the condition of her health. She did not know she was ill, and yet she suffered.

She began to have strange cravings; she liked raw vegetables and salads, and ate them secretly. The innocent

child was quite unaware that her condition was that of serious illness which needed the utmost care. If

Neraud, the Rogrons' doctor, had told this to Pierrette before Brigaut's arrival she would only have smiled;

life was so bitter she could smile at death. But now her feelings changed; the child, to whose physical

sufferings was added the anguish of Breton homesickness (a moral malady so wellknown that colonels in

the army allow for it among their men), was suddenly content to be in Provins. The sight of that yellow

flower, the song, the presence of her friend, revived her as a plant long without water revives under rain.

Pierrette slipped timidly into her cousin's bedroom, made the fire, left the hot water, said a few words, and

went to wake Rogron and do the same offices for him. Then she went down to take in the milk, the bread, and

the other provisions left by the dealers. She stood some time on the sill of the door hoping that Brigaut would

have the sense to come to her; but by that time he was already on his way to Paris.

She had finished the arrangement of the diningroom and was busy in the kitchen when she heard her cousin

Sylvie coming down. Mademoiselle Rogron appeared in a brown silk dressinggown and a cap with bows;

her false front was awry, her nightgown showed above the silk wrapper, her slippers were down at heel. She

gave an eye to everything and then came straight to Pierrette, who was awaiting her orders to know what to

"You came into my room like a sly cat, and you crept out the same way, though you knew very well I had

"Do you dare to tell me, mademoiselle, that a man did not come under your window and talk to you of

Persecution had taught Pierrette the wariness of slaves; so she answered bravely:

"And didn't you get up and go in your bare feet to the window?which will give you an illness; and serve

"I know you have many faults, but I did not think you told lies. You had better think this over, mademoiselle;

you will have to explain this affair to your cousin and to me, or your cousin will be obliged to take severe

The old maid, exasperated by jealousy and curiosity, meant to frighten the girl. Pierrette, like all those who

suffer more than they have strength to bear, kept silence. Silence is the only weapon by which such victims

can conquer; it baffles the Cossack charges of envy, the savage skirmishings of suspicion; it does at times

give victory, crushing and complete,for what is more complete than silence? it is absolute; it is one of the

attributes of infinity. Sylvie watched Pierrette narrowly. The girl colored; but the color, instead of rising

evenly, came out in patches on her cheekbones, in burning and significant spots. A mother, seeing that

symptom of illness, would have changed her tone at once; she would have taken the child on her lap and

questioned her; in fact, she would long ago have tenderly understood the signs of Pierrette's pure and perfect

innocence; she would have seen her weakness and known that the disturbance of the digestive organs and the

other functions of the body was about to affect the lungs. Those eloquent patches would have warned her of

an imminent danger. But an old maid, one in whom the family instincts have never been awakened, to whom

the needs of childhood and the precautions required for adolescence were unknown, had neither the

indulgence nor the compassionate intelligence of a mother; such sufferings as those of Pierrette, instead of

"Pierrette," continued Sylvie, "before your cousin comes down we must have some talk together. Come," she

said, in a rather softer tone, "shut the street door; if any one comes they will rung and we shall hear them."

In spite of the damp mist which was rising from the river, Sylvie took Pierrette along the winding gravel path

which led across the lawn to the edge of the rock terrace,a picturesque little quay, covered with iris and

aquatic plants. She now changed her tactics, thinking she might catch Pierrette tripping by softness; the hyena

"Pierrette," she said, "you are no longer a child; you are nearly fifteen, and it is not at all surprising that you

"But, cousin," said Pierrette, raising her eyes with angelic sweetness to the cold, sour face of her cousin,

It would have been impossible for Sylvie to define a lover with truth and decency to the girl's mind. Instead

of seeing in that question the proof of adorable innocence, she considered it a piece of insincerity.

"Ah," said Pierrette, "when that happens in Brittany we call the young man a suitor."

"Well, remember that in owning your feelings for a man you do no wrong, my dear. The wrong is in hiding

"Pierrette, you have much improved since you made your first communion; you have become pious and

obedient, you love God and your relations; I am satisfied with you. I don't say this to puff you up with pride."

The horrible creature had mistaken despondency, submission, the silence of wretchedness, for virtues!

The sweetest of all consolations to suffering souls, to martyrs, to artists, in the worst of that divine agony

which hatred and envy force upon them, is to meet with praise where they have hitherto found censure and

injustice. Pierrette raised her grateful eyes to her cousin, feeling that she could almost forgive her for the

"But if it is all hypocrisy, if I find you a serpent that I have warmed in my bosom, you will be a wicked girl,

"I think I have nothing to reproach myself with," said Pierrette, with a painful revulsion of her heart at the

"Well, you are now under the eye of God," said the old maid, with a solemn gesture towards the sky; "swear

Pierrette rushed away like a frightened fawn terrified at her tone. Sylvie called her in a dreadful voice.

"Artful wretch!" thought Sylvie. "She is depraved in mind; and now I am certain the little adder has wound

herself round the colonel. She has heard us say he was a baron. To be a baroness! little fool! Ah! I'll get rid of

Sylvie was so lost in thought that she did not notice her brother coming down the path and bemoaning the

"Sylvie! what are you thinking about? I thought you were looking at the fish; sometimes they jump out of the

"How did you sleep?" and he began to tell her about his own dreams. "Don't you think my skin is getting

Ever since Rogron had been in love,but let us not profane the word, ever since he had desired to marry

Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, he was very uneasy about himself and his health. At this moment Pierrette

came down the garden steps and called to them from a distance that breakfast was ready. At sight of her

cousin, Sylvie's skin turned green and yellow, her bile was in commotion. She looked at the floor of the

"I will rub it now if you wish," said the little angel, not aware of the injury such work may do to a young girl.

The diningroom was irreproachably in order. Sylvie sat down and pretended all through breakfast to want

this, that, and the other thing which she would never have thought of in a quieter moment, and which she now

asked for only to make Pierrette rise again and again just as the child was beginning to eat her food. But such

mere teasing was not enough; she wanted a subject on which to find fault, and was angry with herself for not

finding one. She scarcely answered her brother's silly remarks, yet she looked at him only; her eyes avoided

Pierrette. Pierrette was deeply conscious of all this. She brought the milk mixed with cream for each cousin in

a large silver goblet, after heating it carefully in the bainmarie. The brother and sister poured in the coffee

made by Sylvie herself on the table. When Sylvie had carefully prepared hers, she saw an atom of

"The matter is that mademoiselle has put dust in my milk. Do you suppose I am going to drink coffee with

ashes in it? Well, I am not surprised; no one can do two things at once. She wasn't thinking of the milk! a

blackbird might have flown through the kitchen today and she wouldn't have seen it! how should she see the

As she spoke she was laying on the side of her plate the coffee grounds that had run through the filter.

"Oh! then it is I who tell lies, is it?" cried Sylvie, looking at Pierrette and blasting her with a fearful flash of

Organizations which have not been exhausted by powerful emotions often have a vast amount of the vital

fluid at their service. This phenomenon of the extreme clearness of the eye in moments of anger was the more

marked in Mademoiselle Rogron because she had often exercised the power of her eyes in her shop by

opening them to their full extent for the purpose of inspiring her dependents with salutary fear.

"You had better dare to give me the lie!" continued Sylvie; "you deserve to be sent from the table to go and

"What's the matter with you two?" cried Rogron, "you are as cross as bears this morning."

"Mademoiselle knows what I have against her," said Sylvie. "I leave her to make up her mind before

Pierrette was looking out of the window to avoid her cousin's eyes, which frightened her.

"Look at her! she pays no more attention to what I am saying than if I were that sugarbasin! And yet

mademoiselle has a sharp ear; she can hear and answer from the top of the house when some one talks to her

from below. She is perversity itself,perversity, I say; and you needn't expect any good of her; do you hear

Pierrette rose to clear the table and give herself something to do, for she could hardly bear the scene any

longer. Though such language was not new to her, she had never been able to get used to it. Her cousin's rage

seemed to accuse her of some crime. She imagined what her fury would be if she came to know about

Brigaut. Perhaps her cousin would have him sent away, and she should lose him! All the many thoughts, the

deep and rapid thoughts of a slave came to her, and she resolved to keep absolute silence about a

circumstance in which her conscience told her there was nothing wrong. But the cruel, bitter words she had

been made to hear and the wounding suspicion so shocked her that as she reached the kitchen she was taken

with a convulsion of the stomach and turned deadly sick. She dared not complain; she was not sure that any

one would help her. When she returned to the dining room she was white as a sheet, and, saying she was not

well, she started to go to bed, dragging herself up step by step by the baluster and thinking that she was going

"She ill! That's only shamming," replied Sylvie, in a loud voice that Pierrette might hear. "She was well

This last blow struck Pierrette to the earth; she went to bed weeping and praying to God to take her out of this

For a month past Rogron had ceased to carry the "Constitutionnel" to Gouraud; the colonel came

obsequiously to fetch his paper, gossip a little, and take Rogron off to walk if the weather was fine. Sure of

seeing the colonel and being able to question him, Sylvie dressed herself as coquettishly as she knew how.

The old maid thought she was attractive in a green gown, a yellow shawl with a red border, and a white

bonnet with straggling gray feathers. About the hour when the colonel usually came Sylvie stationed herself

in the salon with her brother, whom she had compelled to stay in the house in his dressing gown and

"It is a fine day, colonel," said Rogron, when Gouraud with his heavy step entered the room. "But I'm not

dressed; my sister wanted to go out, and I was going to keep the house. Wait for me; I'll be ready soon."

"Where were you going? you are dressed divinely," said Gouraud, who noticed a certain solemnity on the

"I wanted very much to go out, but my little cousin is ill, and I cannot leave her."

Gouraud's caution, not to say his distrust, was constantly excited by the results of his alliance with Vinet. It

certainly appeared that the lawyer had got the lion's share in their enterprise. Vinet controlled the paper, he

reigned as sole master over it, he took the revenues; whereas the colonel, the responsible editor, earned little.

Vinet and Cournant had done the Rogrons great services; whereas Gouraud, a colonel on halfpay, could do

nothing. Who was to be deputy? Vinet. Who was the chief authority in the party? Vinet. Whom did the

liberals all consult? Vinet. Moreover, the colonel knew fully as well as Vinet himself the extent and depth of

the passion suddenly aroused in Rogron by the beautiful Bathilde de Chargeboeuf. This passion had now

become intense, like all the last passions of men. Bathilde's voice made him tremble. Absorbed in his desires

Rogron hid them; he dared not hope for such a marriage. To sound him, the colonel mentioned that he was

thinking himself of asking for Bathilde's hand. Rogron turned pale at the thought of such a formidable rival,

Thus Vinet reigned supreme in the Rogron household while he, the colonel, had no hold there except by the

extremely hypothetical tie of his mendacious affection for Sylvie, which it was not yet clear that Sylvie

reciprocated. When the lawyer told him of the priest's manoeuvre, and advised him to break with Sylvie and

marry Pierrette, he certainly flattered Gouraud's foible; but after analyzing the inner purpose of that advice

and examining the ground all about him, the colonel thought he perceived in his ally the intention of

separating him from Sylvie, and profiting by her fears to throw the whole Rogron property into the hands of

Therefore, when the colonel was left alone with Sylvie his perspicacity possessed itself immediately of

certain signs which betrayed her uneasiness. He saw at once that she was under arms and had made this plan

for seeing him alone. As he already suspected Vinet of playing him some trick, he attributed the conference

to the instigation of the lawyer, and was instantly on his guard, as he would have been in an enemy's

country,with an eye all about him, an ear to the faintest sound, his mind on the qui vive, and his hand on a

weapon. The colonel had the defect of never believing a single word said to him by a woman; so that when

the old maid brought Pierrette on the scene, and told him she had gone to bed before midday, he concluded

"She is getting to be quite pretty, that little thing," he said with an easy air.

"You ought to send her to Paris and put her in a shop," continued the colonel. "She would make her fortune.

"Good!" thought the colonel, "I was right. Vinet advised me to marry Pierrette just to spoil my chance with

the old harridan. But," he said aloud, "what else can you do with her? There's that beautiful girl Bathilde de

Chargeboeuf, noble and wellconnected, reduced to single blessedness,nobody will have her. Pierrette

has nothing, and she'll never marry. As for beauty, what is it? To me, for example, youth and beauty are

nothing; for haven't I been a captain of cavalry in the imperial guard, and carried my spurs into all the capitals

of Europe, and known all the handsomest women of these capitals? Don't talk to me; I tell you youth and

beauty are devilishly common and silly. At fortyeight," he went on, adding a few years to his age, to match

Sylvie's, "after surviving the retreat from Moscow and going through that terrible campaign of France, a man

is broken down; I'm nothing but an old fellow now. A woman like you would pet me and care for me, and her

money, joined to my poor pension, would give me ease in my old days; of course I should prefer such a

woman to a little minx who would worry the life out of me, and be thirty years old, with passions, when I

should be sixty, with rheumatism. At my age, a man considers and calculates. To tell you the truth between

Sylvie's face was an open book to the colonel during this tirade, and her next question proved to him Vinet's

"Heavens! are you out of your mind, my dear Sylvie?" he cried. "Can those who have no teeth crack nuts?

Sylvie thus reassured resolved not to show her own hand, and thought herself very shrewd in putting her own

"How could your brother take up such an incongruous idea? Why, it is only a few days ago that, in order to

find out his secrets, I told him I loved Bathilde. He turned as white as your collar."

"Madly,and yet Bathilde is only after his money." ("One for you, Vinet!" thought the colonel.) "I can't

understand why he should have told you that about Pierrette. No, Sylvie," he said, taking her hand and

pressing it in a certain way, "since you have opened this matter" (he drew nearer to her), "well" (he kissed her

hand; as a cavalry captain he had already proved his courage), "let me tell you that I desire no wife but you.

Though such a marriage may look like one of convenience, I feel, on my side, a sincere affection for you."

"But I don't want to be miserable in my home, and in less than ten years see a popinjay like Julliard hovering

round my wife and addressing verses to her in the newspapers. I'm too much of a man to stand that. No, I will

"Well, colonel, we will talk seriously of this another time," said Sylvie, casting a glance upon him which she

supposed to be full of love, though, in point of fact, it was a good deal like that of an ogress. Her cold, blue

lips of a violet tinge drew back from the yellow teeth, and she thought she smiled.

"I'm ready," said Rogron, coming in and carrying off the colonel, who bowed in a loverlike way to the old

Gouraud determined to press on his marriage with Sylvie, and make himself master of the house; resolving to

rid himself, through his influence over Sylvie during the honeymoon, of Bathilde and Celeste Habert. So,

during their walk, he told Rogron he had been joking the other day; that he had no real intention of aspiring to

Bathilde; that he was not rich enough to marry a woman without fortune; and then he confided to him his real

wishes, declaring that he had long chosen Sylvie for her good qualities,in short, he aspired to the honor of

"Ah, colonel, my dear baron! if nothing is wanting but my consent you have it with no further delay than the

Sylvie spent the morning in her own room considering how the new household could be arranged. She

determined to build a second storey for her brother and to furnish the rest for herself and her husband; but she

also resolved, in the true oldmaidish spirit, to subject the colonel to certain proofs by which to judge of his

heart and his morals before she finally committed herself. She was still suspicious, and wanted to make sure

Pierrette came down before the dinnerhour to lay the table. Sylvie had been forced to cook the dinner, and

had sworn at that "cursed Pierrette" for a spot she had made on her gown,wasn't it plain that if Pierrette

had done her own work Sylvie wouldn't have got that greasespot on her silk dress?

"Oh, here you are, peakling? You are like the dog of the marshal who woke up as soon as the saucepans

That idea: "You did not tell the truth about what happened in the square this morning, therefore you lie in

everything," was a hammer with which Sylvie battered the head and also the heart of the poor girl

To Pierrette's great astonishment Sylvie sent her to dress in her best clothes after dinner. The liveliest

imagination is never up to the level of the activity which suspicion excites in the mind of an old maid. In this

particular case, this particular old maid carried the day against politicians, lawyers, notaries, and all other

self interests. Sylvie determined to consult Vinet, after examining herself into all the suspicious

circumstances. She kept Pierrette close to her, so as to find out from the girl's face whether the colonel had

On this particular evening the Chargeboeuf ladies were the first to arrive. Bathilde, by Vinet's advice, had

become more elaborate in her dress. She now wore a charming gown of blue velveteen, with the same

transparent fichu, garnet pendants in her ears, her hair in ringlets, the wily jeannette round her throat, black

satin slippers, gray silk stockings, and gants de Suede; add to these things the manners of a queen and the

coquetry of a young girl determined to capture Rogron. Her mother, calm and dignified, retained, as did her

daughter, a certain aristocratic insolence, with which the two women hedged themselves and preserved the

spirit of their caste. Bathilde was a woman of intelligence, a fact which Vinet alone had discovered during the

two months' stay the ladies had made at his house. When he had fully fathomed the mind of the girl, wounded

and disappointed as it was by the fruitlessness of her beauty and her youth, and enlightened by the contempt

she felt for the men of a period in which money was the only idol, Vinet, himself surprised, exclaimed,

"If I could only have married you, Bathilde, I should today be Keeper of the Seals. I should call myself

Bathilde had no vulgar idea in her marriage intentions. She did not marry to be a mother, nor to possess a

husband; she married for freedom, to gain a responsible position, to be called "madame," and to act as men

act. Rogron was nothing but a name to her; she expected to make something of the fool,a voting deputy,

for instance, whose instigator she would be; moreover, she longed to avenge herself on her family, who had

taken no notice of a girl without money. Vinet had much enlarged and strengthened her ideas by admiring

"My dear Bathilde," he said, while explaining to her the influence of women, and showing her the sphere of

action in which she ought to work, "do you suppose that Tiphaine, a man of the most ordinary capacity, could

ever get to be a judge of the Royal court in Paris by himself? No, it is Madame Tiphaine who has got him

elected deputy, and it is she who will push him when they get to Paris. Her mother, Madame Roguin, is a

shrewd woman, who does what she likes with the famous banker du Tillet, a crony of Nucingen, and both of

them allies of the Kellers. The administration is on the best of terms with those lynxes of the bank. There is

no reason why Tiphaine should not be judge, through his wife, of a Royal court. Marry Rogron; we'll have

him elected deputy from Provins as soon as I gain another precinct in the SeineetMarne. You can then get

him a place as receivergeneral, where he'll have nothing to do but sign his name. We shall belong to the

opposition if the Liberals triumph, but if the Bourbons remain ah! then we shall lean gently, gently towards

the centre. Besides, you must remember Rogron can't live forever, and then you can marry a titled man. In

short, put yourself in a good position, and the Chargeboeufs will be ready enough to serve us. Your poverty

has no doubt taught you, as mine did me, to know what men are worth. We must make use of them as we do

of posthorses. A man, or a woman, will take us along to such or such a distance."

Vinet ended by making Bathilde a small edition of Catherine de Medicis. He left his wife at home, rejoiced to

be alone with her two children, while he went every night to the Rogrons' with Madame and Mademoiselle de

Chargeboeuf. He arrived there in all the glory of better circumstances. His spectacles were of gold, his

waistcoat silk; a white cravat, black trousers, thin boots, a black coat made in Paris, and a gold watch and

chain, made up his apparel. In place of the former Vinet, pale and thin, snarling and gloomy, the present

Vinet bore himself with the air and manner of a man of importance; he marched boldly forward, certain of

success, with that peculiar show of security which belongs to lawyers who know the hidden places of the law.

His sly little head was wellbrushed, his chin wellshaved, which gave him a mincing though frigid look,

that made him seem agreeable in the style of Robespierre. Certainly he would make a fine attorney general,

endowed with elastic, mischievous, and even murderous eloquence, or an orator of the shrewd type of

Benjamin Constant. The bitterness and the hatred which formerly actuated him had now turned into

"Goodevening, my dear; how are you?" said Madame de Chargeboeuf, greeting Sylvie.

Bathilde went straight to the fireplace, took off her bonnet, looked at herself in the glass, and placed her

"What is the matter with you?" she said to him, looking directly in his face. "You have not bowed to me. Pray

She pushed past Pierrette to lay down her hat, which the latter took from her hand, and which she let her take

exactly as though she were a servant. Men are supposed to be ferocious, and tigers too; but neither tigers,

vipers, diplomatists, lawyers, executioners or kings ever approach, in their greatest atrocities, the gentle

cruelty, the poisoned sweetness, the savage disdain of one young woman for another, when she thinks herself

superior in birth, or fortune, or grace, and some question of marriage, or precedence, or any of the feminine

rivalries, is raised. The "Thank you, mademoiselle," which Bathilde said to Pierrette was a poem in many

strophes. She was named Bathilde, and the other Pierrette. She was a Chargeboeuf, the other a Lorrain.

Pierrette was small and weak, Bathilde was tall and full of life. Pierrette was living on charity, Bathilde and

her mother lived on their means. Pierrette wore a stuff gown with a chemisette, Bathilde made the velvet of

hers undulate. Bathilde had the finest shoulders in the department, and the arm of a queen; Pierrette's

shoulderblades were skin and bone. Pierrette was Cinderella, Bathilde was the fairy. Bathilde was about to

marry, Pierrette was to die a maid. Bathilde was adored, Pierrette was loved by none. Bathilde's hair was

ravishingly dressed, she had so much taste; Pierrette's was hidden beneath her Breton cap, and she knew

nothing of the fashions. Moral, Bathilde was everything, Pierrette nothing. The proud little Breton girl

"Goodevening, little girl," said Madame de Chargeboeuf, from the height of her condescending grandeur,

Vinet put the last touch to this sort of insult by looking fixedly at Pierrette and saying, in three keys, "Oh! oh!

"Fine!" said the poor child; "you should say that to Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, not to me."

"Oh! she is always beautifully dressed," replied the lawyer. "Isn't she, Rogron?" he added, turning to the

"Why do you force him to say what he does not think?" said Bathilde; "nothing about me pleases him. Isn't

that true?" she added, going up to Rogron and standing before him. "Look at me, and say if it isn't true."

Rogron looked at her from head to foot, and gently closed his eyes like a cat whose head is being scratched.

Rogron looked at the fire and was silent. Just then Mademoiselle Habert entered the room, followed by the

Celeste Habert, who had now become the common enemy, could only reckon Sylvie on her side;

nevertheless, everybody present showed her the more civility and amiable attention because each was

undermining her. Her brother, though no longer able to be on the scene of action, was well aware of what was

going on, and as soon as he perceived that his sister's hopes were killed he became an implacable and terrible

Every one will immediately picture to themselves Mademoiselle Habert when they know that if she had not

kept an institution for young ladies she would still have had the air of a schoolmistress. School mistresses

have a way of their own in putting on their caps. Just as old Englishwomen have acquired a monopoly in

turbans, school mistresses have a monopoly of these caps. Flowers nod above the frame work, flowers that

are more than artificial; lying by in closets for years the cap is both new and old, even on the day it is first

worn. These spinsters make it a point of honor to resemble the lay figures of a painter; they sit on their hips,

never on their chairs. When any one speaks to them they turn their whole busts instead of simply turning their

heads; and when their gowns creak one is tempted to believe that the mechanism of these beings is out of

order. Mademoiselle Habert, an ideal of her species, had a stern eye, a grim mouth, and beneath her wrinkled

chin the strings of her cap, always limp and faded, floated as she moved. Two moles, rather large and brown,

adorned that chin, and from them sprouted hairs which she allowed to grow rampant like clematis. And

The company went to work at their boston. Mademoiselle Habert sat opposite to Sylvie, with the colonel at

her side opposite to Madame de Chargeboeuf. Bathilde was near her mother and Rogron. Sylvie placed

Pierrette between herself and the colonel; Rogron had set out a second cardtable, in case other company

arrived. Two lamps were on the chimneypiece between the candelabra and the clock, and the tables were

"Come, Pierrette, take your work, my dear," said Sylvie, with treacherous softness, noticing that the girl was

She usually affected to treat Pierrette well before company. This deception irritated the honest Breton girl,

and made her despise her cousin. She took her embroidery, but as she drew her stitches she still watched

Gouraud's play. Gouraud behaved as if he did not know the girl was near him. Sylvie noticed this apparent

indifference and thought it extremely suspicious. Presently she undertook a grande misere in hearts, the pool

being full of counters, besides containing twentyseven sous. The rest of the company had now arrived;

among them the deputyjudge Desfondrilles, who for the last two months had abandoned the Tiphaine party

and connected himself more or less with the Vinets. He was standing before the chimneypiece, with his

back to the fire and the tails of his coat over his arms, looking round the fine salon of which Mademoiselle de

Chargeboeuf was the shining ornament; for it really seemed as if all the reds of its decoration had been made

expressly to enhance her style of beauty. Silence reigned; Pierrette was watching the game, Sylvie's attention

The colonel began a sequence in hearts; the hearts all lay between himself and Sylvie; the colonel won her

"That's not fair!" she cried. "Pierrette saw my hand, and the colonel took her advice."

"But, mademoiselle," said Celeste, "it was the colonel's game to play hearts after you began them."

The scene made Monsieur Desfondrilles smile; his was a keen mind, which found much amusement in

"Yes, it was certainly the colonel's game," said Cournant the notary, not knowing what the question was.

Sylvie threw a look at Mademoiselle Habert,one of those glances which pass from old maid to old maid,

"I was looking at you all," said the deputyjudge, "and I can swear that Pierrette saw no one's hand but the

"Pooh!" said Gouraud, alarmed, "little girls know how to slide their eyes into everything."

"Yes," continued Gouraud. "I dare say she looked into your hand to play you a trick. Didn't you, little one?"

"No," said the truthful Breton, "I wouldn't do such a thing; if I had, it would have been in my cousin's

"You know you are a storyteller and a little fool," cried Sylvie. "After what happened this morning do you

Pierrette did not wait for Sylvie to finish her sentence; foreseeing a torrent of insults, she rushed away

without a light and ran to her room. Sylvie turned white with anger and muttered between her teeth, "She

As she spoke Pierrette struck her head against the door of the passage which some one had left open.

Sylvie thought she might escape paying her misere if she went to see after Pierrette, but Madame de

The remark, based on the old maid's trickery and her bad faith in paying her debts at cards was approved by

the others. Sylvie sat down and thought no more of Pierrette,an indifference which surprised no one. When

the game was over, about half past nine o'clock, she flung herself into an easy chair at the corner of the

fireplace and did not even rise as her guests departed. The colonel was torturing her; she did not know what

Pierrette had given herself a frightful blow on the head, just above the ear, at the spot where young girls part

their hair when they put their "front hair" in curlpapers. The next day there was a large swelling.

"God has punished you," said Sylvie at the breakfast table. "You disobeyed me; you treated me with

disrespect in leaving the room before I had finished my sentence; you got what you deserved."

"Nevertheless," said Rogron, "she ought to put on a compress of salt and water."

The poor child had reached a point where even such a remark seemed to her a proof of kindness.

The week ended as it had begun, in continual torture. Sylvie grew ingenious, and found refinements of

tyranny with almost savage cruelty; the red Indians might have taken a lesson from her. Pierrette dared not

complain of her vague sufferings, nor of the actual pains she now felt in her head. The origin of her cousin's

present anger was the nonrevelation of Brigaut's arrival. With Breton obstinacy Pierrette was determined to

keep silence,a resolution that is perfectly explicable. It is easy to see how her thoughts turned to Brigaut,

fearing some danger for him if he were discovered, yet instinctively longing to have him near her, and happy

in knowing he was in Provins. What joy to have seen him! That single glimpse was like the look an exile

casts upon his country, or the martyr lifts to heaven, where his eyes, gifted with secondsight, can enter while

Pierrette's glance had been so thoroughly understood by the major's son that, as he planed his planks or took

his measures or joined his wood, he was working his brains to find out some way of communicating with her.

He ended by choosing the simplest of all schemes. At a certain hour of the night Pierrette must lower a letter

by a string from her window. In the midst of the girl's own sufferings, she too was sustained by the hope of

being able to communicate with Brigaut. The same desire was in both hearts; parted, they understood each

other! At every shock to her heart, every throb of pain in her head, Pierrette said to herself, "Brigaut is here!"

One morning in the market, Brigaut, lying in wait, was able to get near her. Though he saw her tremble and

turn pale, like an autumn leaf about to flutter down, he did not lose his head, but quietly bought fruit of the

marketwoman with whom Sylvie was bargaining. He found his chance of slipping a note to Pierrette, all the

while joking the woman with the ease of a man accustomed to such manoeuvres; so cool was he in action,

though the blood hummed in his ears and rushed boiling through his veins and arteries. He had the firmness

of a galleyslave without, and the shrinkings of innocence within him, like certain mothers in their

Pierrette's inward commotion was like Brigaut's. She slipped the note into the pocket of her apron. The hectic

spots upon her cheekbones turned to a cherryscarlet. These two children went through, all unknown to

themselves, many more emotions than go to the makeup of a dozen ordinary loves. This moment in the

marketplace left in their souls a wellspring of passionate feeling. Sylvie, who did not recognize the Breton

accent, took no notice of Brigaut, and Pierrette went home safely with her treasure.

The letters of these two poor children were fated to serve as documents in a terrible judicial inquiry;

otherwise, without the fatal circumstances that occasioned that inquiry, they would never have been heard of.

My dear Pierrette,At midnight, when everybody is asleep but me, who am watching you, I will come every

night under your window. Let down a string long enough to reach me; it will not make any noise; you must

fasten to the end of it whatever you write to me. I will tie my letter in the same way. I hear they have taught

you to read and write,those wicked relations who were to do you good, and have done you so much harm.

You, Pierrette, the daughter of a colonel who died for France, reduced by those monsters to be their servant!

That is where all your pretty color and health have gone. My Pierrette, what has become of her? what have

they done with her. I see plainly you are not the same, not happy. Oh! Pierrette, let us go back to Brittany. I

can earn enough now to give you what you need; for you yourself can earn three francs a day and I can earn

four or five; and thirty sous is all I want to live on. Ah! Pierrette, how I have prayed the good God for you

ever since I came here! I have asked him to give me all your sufferings, and you all pleasures. Why do you

stay with them? why do they keep you? Your grandmother is more to you than they. They are vipers; they

have taken your gaiety away from you. You do not even walk as you once did in Brittany. Let us go back. I

am here to serve you, to do your will; tell me what you wish. If you need money I have a hundred and fifty

francs; I can send them up by the string, though I would like to kiss your dear hands and lay the money in

them. Ah, dear Pierrette, it is a long time now that the blue sky has been overcast for me. I have not had two

hours' happiness since I put you into that diligence of evil. And when I saw you the other morning, looking

like a shadow, I could not reach you; that hag of a cousin came between us. But at least we can have the

consolation of praying to God together every Sunday in church; perhaps he will hear us all the more when we

This letter so affected Pierrette that she sat for more than an hour reading and rereading and gazing at it.

Then she remembered with anguish that she had nothing to write with. She summoned courage to make the

difficult journey from her garret to the diningroom, where she obtained pen, paper, and ink, and returned

safely without waking her terrible cousin. A few minutes before midnight she had finished the following

My Friend,Oh! yes, my friend; for there is no one but you, Jacques, and my grandmother to love me. God

forgive me, but you are the only two persons whom I love, both alike, neither more nor less. I was too little to

know my dear mamma; but you, Jacques, and my grandmother, and my grandfather,God grant him

heaven, for he suffered much from his ruin, which was mine,but you two who are left, I love you both,

unhappy as I am. Indeed, to know how much I love you, you will have to know how much I suffer; but I don't

wish that, it would grieve you too much. They speak to me as we would not speak to a dog; they treat me like

the worst of girls; and yet I do examine myself before God, and I cannot find that I do wrong by them. Before

you sang to me the marriage song I saw the mercy of God in my sufferings; for I had prayed to him to take

me from the world, and I felt so ill I said to myself, "God hears me!" But, Jacques, now you are here, I want

to live and go back to Brittany, to my grandmamma who loves me, though they say she stole eight thousand

francs of mine. Jacques, is that so? If they are mine could you get them! But it is not true, for if my

I don't want to trouble her last days, my kind, good grandmamma, with the knowledge of my troubles; she

might die of it. Ah! if she knew they made her grandchild scrub the pots and pans,she who used to say to

me, when I wanted to help her after her troubles, "Don't touch that, my darling; leave itleave ityou will

spoil your pretty fingers." Ah! my hands are never clean now. Sometimes I can hardly carry the basket home

from market, it cuts my arm. Still I don't think my cousins mean to be cruel; but it is their way always to

scold, and it seems that I have no right to leave them. My cousin Rogron is my guardian. One day when I

wanted to run away because I could not bear it, and told them so, my cousin Sylvie said the gendarmes would

go after me, for the law was my master. Oh! I know now that cousins cannot take the place of father or

My poor Jacques, what do you suppose I could do with your money? Keep it for our journey. Oh! how I think

of you and PenHoel, and the big pong,that's where we had our only happy days. I shall have no more, for

I feel I am going from bad to worse. I am very ill, Jacques. I have dreadful pains in my head, and in my

bones, and back, which kill me, and I have no appetite except for horrid things,roots and leaves and such

things. Sometimes I cry, when I am all alone, for they won't let me do anything I like if they know it, not

even cry. I have to hide to offer my tears to Him to whom we owe the mercies which we call afflictions. It

must have been He who gave you the blessed thought to come and sing the marriage song beneath my

window. Ah! Jacques, my cousin heard you, and she said I had a lover. If you wish to be my lover, love me

well. I promise to love you always, as I did in the past, and to be Your faithful servant, Pierrette Lorrain.

She had brought a crust of bread from the kitchen, in which she now made a hole for the letter, and fastened it

like a weight to her string. At midnight, having opened her window with extreme caution, she lowered the

letter with the crust, which made no noise against either the wall of the house or the blinds. Presently she felt

the string pulled by Brigaut, who broke it and then crept softly away. When he reached the middle of the

square she could see him indistinctly by the starlight; but he saw her quite clearly in the zone of light thrown

by the candle. The two children stood thus for over an hour, Pierrette making him signs to go, he starting, she

remaining, he coming back to his post, and Pierrette again signing that he must leave her. This was repeated

till the child closed her window, went to bed, and blew out the candle. Once in bed she fell asleep, happy in

heart though suffering in body,she had Brigaut's letter under her pillow. She slept as the persecuted

sleep,a slumber bright with angels; that slumber full of heavenly arabesques, in atmospheres of gold and

The moral nature had such empire over that frail physical nature that on the morrow Pierrette rose light and

joyous as a lark, as radiant and as gay. Such a change could not escape the vigilant eye of her cousin Sylvie,

who, this time, instead of scolding her, set about watching her with the scrutiny of a magpie. "What reason is

there for such happiness?" was a thought of jealousy, not of tyranny. If the colonel had not been in Sylvie's

mind she would have said to Pierrette as formerly, "Pierrette, you are very noise, and very regardless of what

you have often been told." But now the old maid resolved to spy upon her as only old maids can spy. The day

"You don't appear to be ill now, mademoiselle," said Sylvie at dinner. "Didn't I tell you she put it all on to

annoy us?" she cried, addressing her brother, and not waiting for Pierrette's answer.

"Fever! what fever? You are as gay as a lark. Perhaps you have seen some one again?"

"Tartufe!" cried Sylvie; "and only fourteen years old! what a nature! Do you mean to come to a bad end?"

"I don't know what you mean," said Pierrette, raising her sweet and luminous brown eyes to her cousin.

"This evening," said Sylvie, "you are to stay in the diningroom with a candle, and do your sewing. You are

not wanted in the salon; I sha'n't have you looking into my hand to help your favorites."

Rogron, who did not understand his sister's anger, said to Pierrette: "What is all this about? Try to please your

cousin, Pierrette; she is very indulgent to you, very gentle, and if you put her out of temper the fault is

certainly yours. Why do you squabble so? For my part I like to live in peace. Look at Mademoiselle Bathilde

Pierrette felt able to bear everything. Brigaut would come at midnight and bring her an answer, and that hope

was the viaticum of her day. But she was using up her last strength. She did not go to bed, and stood waiting

for the hour to strike. At last midnight sounded; softly she opened the window; this time she used a string

made by tying bits of twine together. She heard Brigaut's step, and on drawing up the cord she found the

My dear Pierrette,As you are so ill you must not tire yourself by waiting for me. You will hear me if I cry

like an owl. Happily my father taught me to imitate their note. So when you hear the cry three times you will

know I am there, and then you must let down the cord. But I shall not come again for some days. I hope then

Oh! Pierrette, don't talk of dying! Pierrette, don't think such things! All my heart shook, I felt as though I

were dead myself at the mere idea. No, my Pierrette, you must not die; you will live happy, and soon you

shall be delivered from your persecutors. If I do not succeed in what I am undertaking for your rescue, I shall

appeal to the law, and I shall speak out before heaven and earth and tell how your wicked relations are

treating you. I am certain that you have not many more days to suffer; have patience, my Pierrette! Jacques is

watching over you as in the old days when we slid on the pond and I pulled you out of the hole in which we

Adieu, my dear Pierrette; in a few days, if God wills, we shall be happy. Alas, I dare not tell you the only

thing that may hinder our meeting. But God loves us! In a few days I shall see my dear Pierrette at liberty,

without troubles, without any one to hinder my looking at youfor, ah! Pierrette, I hunger to see you

Pierrette, Pierrette, who deigns to love me and to tell me so. Yes, Pierrette, I will be your lover when I have

earned the fortune you deserve; till then I will be to you only a devoted servant whose life is yours to do what

Here is a letter of which the major's son said nothing to Pierrette. He wrote it to Madame Lorrain at

Madame Lorrain,Your granddaughter will die, wornout with ill treatment, if you do not come to fetch

her. I could scarcely recognize her; and to show you the state of things I enclose a letter I have received from

Pierrette. You are thought here to have taken the money of your granddaughter, and you ought to justify

yourself. If you can, come at once. We may still be happy; but if delay Pierrette will be dead.

Though this letter of the youth whom in her innocence she called her lover was almost enigmatical to

Pierrette, she believed in it with all her virgin faith. Her heart was filled with that sensation which travellers

in the desert feel when they see from afar the palmtrees round a well. In a few days her misery would

endJacques said so. She relied on this promise of her childhood's friend; and yet, as she laid the letter

"Poor Jacques," she said to herself, "he does not know the hole into which I have now fallen!"

Sylvie had heard Pierrette, and she had also heard Brigaut under her window. She jumped out of bed and

rushed to the window to look through the blinds into the square and there she saw, in the moonlight, a man

hurrying in the direction of the colonel's house, in front of which Brigaut happened to stop. The old maid

gently opened her door, went upstairs, was amazed to find a light in Pierrette's room, looked through the

"Why is your candle burning at this time of night? Open the door; I must know what this means."

Pierrette went to the door barefooted, and as soon as Sylvie entered the room she saw the cord, which

Pierrette had forgotten to put away, not dreaming of a surprise. Sylvie jumped upon it.

"Nothing!" she cried. "Always lying; you'll never get to heaven that way. Go to bed; you'll take cold."

She asked no more questions and went away, leaving Pierrette terrified by her unusual clemency. Instead of

exploding with rage, Sylvie had suddenly determined to surprise Pierrette and the colonel together, to seize

their letters and confound the two lovers who were deceiving her. Pierrette, inspired by a sense of danger,

Pierrette rejoiced in the thought that Jacques had determined to hold no communication with her for some

days, because her cousin's suspicions would be quieted by finding nothing to feed them. Sylvie did in fact

spend the next three nights on her legs, and each evening in watching the innocent colonel, without

discovering either in him or in Pierrette, or in the house or out of it, anything that betrayed their

understanding. She sent Pierrette to confession, and seized that moment to search the child's room, with the

method and penetration of a spy or a customhouse officer. She found nothing. Her fury reached the apogee

of human sentiments. If Pierrette had been there she would certainly have struck her remorselessly. To a

woman of her temper, jealousy was less a sentiment than an occupation; she existed in it, it made her heart

beat, she felt emotions hitherto completely unknown to her; the slightest sound or movement kept her on the

Sylvie's severity to her cousin reached the point of refined cruelty, and made the deplorable condition of the

poor girl worse daily. She had fever regularly, and the pains in her head became intolerable. By the end of the

week even the visitors at the house noticed her suffering face, which would have touched to pity all

selfishness less cruel than theirs. It happened that Doctor Neraud, possibly by Vinet's advice, did not come to

the house during that week. The colonel, knowing himself suspected by Sylvie, was afraid to risk his

marriage by showing any solicitude for Pierrette. Bathilde explained the visible change in the girl by her

natural growth. But at last, one Sunday evening, when Pierrette was in the salon, her sufferings overcame her

and she fainted away. The colonel, who first saw her going, caught her in his arms and carried her to a sofa.

"She did it on purpose," said Sylvie, looking at Mademoiselle Habert and the rest who were playing boston

"She seemed well enough in your arms," Sylvie said to him in a low voice, with a savage smile.

"The colonel is right," said Madame de Chargeboeuf. "You ought to send for a doctor. This morning at

church every one was speaking, as they came out, of Mademoiselle Lorrain's appearance."

Desfondrilles called to Sylvie and told her to unfasten her cousin's gown. Sylvie went up to the girl, saying,

She unfastened the gown and was about to touch the corset, when Pierrette, roused by the danger, sat up with

Sylvie had, however, touched the corset and felt the papers. She let Pierrette go, saying to the company:

"What do you think now of her illness? I tell you it is all a pretence. You have no idea of the perversity of

After the cardplaying was over she kept Vinet from following the other guests; she was furious and wanted

vengeance, and was grossly rude to the colonel when he bade her goodnight. Gouraud threw a look at the

lawyer which threatened him to the depths of his being and seemed to put a ball in his entrails. Sylvie told

"Now that you have come to that decision I may speak," said the lawyer. "The colonel is my friend, but I am

more yours than his. Rogron has done me services which I can never forget. I am as strong a friend as I am an

enemy. Once in the Chamber I shall rise to power, and I will make your brother a receivergeneral. Now

swear to me, before I say more, that you will never repeat what I tell you." (Sylvie made an affirmative sign.)

"If it had not been for the embarrassments this vice has brought upon him, he might have been a marshal of

France," continued Vinet. "He is capable of running through your property; but he is very astute; you cannot

be sure of not having children, and you told me yourself the risks you feared. No, if you want to marry, wait

till I am in the Chamber and then take that old Desfondrilles, who shall be made chief justice. If you want

revenge on the colonel make your brother marry Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf,I can get her consent; she

has two thousand francs a year, and you will be connected with the de Chargeboeufs as I am. Recollect what I

"He is quite capable of it," said Vinet, "and capable of marrying her after your death."

"I tell you that man has the shrewdness of the devil. Marry your brother and announce that you mean to

remain unmarried and will leave your property to your nephews and nieces. That will strike a blow at

"Ah! that's true," cried the old maid, "I can serve them both right. She shall go to a shop, and get nothing

Vinet departed, having put his plan into Sylvie's head, her dogged obstinacy being wellknown to him. The

The lawyer found the colonel in the square, smoking a cigar while he waited for him.

"Halt!" said Gouraud; "you have pulled me down, but stones enough came with me to bury you"

"Colonel or not, I shall give you your deserts. In the first place, you shall not be deputy"

"Colonel, listen to me. Is there no one to marry but that old Sylvie? I have just been defending you to her; you

are accused and convicted of writing to Pierrette; she saw you leave your house at midnight and come to the

"She means to marry her brother to Bathilde and leave her fortune to their children."

"Yes he will," replied Vinet. "But I promise to find you some young and agreeable woman with a hundred

and fifty thousand francs? Don't be a fool; how can you and I afford to quarrel? Things have gone against you

"Then we must understand each other," said the colonel. "Get me a wife with a hundred and fifty thousand

francs before the elections; if not look out for yourself! I don't like unpleasant bedfellows, and you've

About one o'clock that night three clear, sharp cries of an owl, wonderfully well imitated, echoed through the

square. Pierrette heard them in her feverish sleep; she jumped up, moist with perspiration, opened her

window, saw Brigaut, and flung down a ball of silk, to which he fastened a letter. Sylvie, agitated by the

events of the day and her own indecision of mind, was not asleep; she heard the owl.

"Ah, bird of illomen!" she thought. "Why, Pierrette is getting up! What is she after?"

Hearing the attic window open softly, Sylvie rushed to her own window and heard the rustle of paper against

her blinds. She fastened the strings of her bedgown and went quickly upstairs to Pierrette's room, where she

"Ha! I've caught you!" cried the old woman, rushing to the window, from which she saw Jacques running at

"No, cousin," said Pierrette, who, by one of those strong inspirations of youth sustained by her own soul, rose

to a grandeur of resistance such as we admire in the history of certain peoples reduced to despair.

"Ha! you will not?" cried Sylvie, advancing upon the girl with a face full of hatred and fury.

Pierrette fell back to get time to put her letter in her hand, which she clenched with unnatural force. Seeing

this manoeuvre Sylvie grasped the delicate white hand of the girl in her lobster claws and tried to open it. It

was a frightful struggle, an infamous struggle; it was more than a physical struggle; it assailed the mind, the

sole treasure of the human being, the thought, which God has placed beyond all earthly power and guards as

the secret way between the sufferer and Himself. The two women, one dying, the other in the vigor of health,

looked at each other fixedly. Pierrette's eyes darted on her executioner the look the famous Templar on the

rack cast upon Philippe le Bel, who could not bear it and fled thunderstricken. Sylvie, a woman and a jealous

woman, answered that magnetic look with malignant flashes. A dreadful silence reigned. The clenched hand

of the Breton girl resisted her cousin's efforts like a block of steel. Sylvie twisted Pierrette's arm, she tried to

force the fingers open; unable to do so she stuck her nails into the flesh. At last, in her madness, she set her

teeth into the wrist, trying to conquer the girl by pain. Pierrette defied her still, with that same terrible glance

of innocence. The anger of the old maid grew to such a pitch that it became blind fury. She seized Pierrette's

arm and struck the closed fist upon the windowsill, and then upon the marble of the mantelpiece, as we

At that instant, loud knocks were heard at the front door. Exhausted, the two women paused a moment.

Rogron, awakened and uneasy, not knowing what was happening, had got up, gone to his sister's room, and

not finding her was frightened. Hearing the knocks he went down, unfastened the front door, and was nearly

At this moment Sylvie's eyes chanced to fall on Pierrette's corset, and she remembered the papers. Releasing

the girl's wrist she sprang upon the corset like a tiger on its prey, and showed it to Pierrette with a smile,the

"I!" said a woman with white hair and an aged parchment face, in which two gray eyes glittered.

"Ah! grandmother, you have come too late," cried the poor child, bursting into tears.

Pierrette fell upon her bed, her strength all gone, halfdead with the exhaustion which, in her feeble state,

followed so violent a struggle. The tall gray woman took her in her arms, as a nurse lifts a child, and went

out, followed by Brigaut, without a word to Sylvie, on whom she cast one glance of majestic accusation.

The apparition of that august old woman, in her Breton costume, shrouded in her coif (a sort of hooded

mantle of black cloth), accompanied by Brigaut, appalled Sylvie; she fancied she saw death. She slowly went

down the stairs, listened to the front door closing behind them, and came face to face with her brother, who

She went back to her own bed, ripped open the corset, and read Brigaut's two letters, which confounded her.

She went to sleep in the greatest perplexity,not imagining the terrible results to which her conduct was to

The letters sent by Brigaut to old Madame Lorrain reached her in a moment of ineffable joy, which the

perusal of them troubled. The poor old woman had grieved deeply in living without her Pierrette beside her,

but she had consoled her loneliness with the thought that the sacrifice of herself was in the interests of her

grandchild. She was blessed with one of those everyoung hearts which are upheld and invigorated by the

idea of sacrifice. Her old husband, whose only joy was his little granddaughter, had grieved for Pierrette;

every day he had seemed to look for her. It was an old man's grief,on which such old men live, of which

Every one can now imagine the happiness which this poor old woman, living in a sort of almshouse, felt

when she learned of a generous action, rare indeed but not impossible in France. The head of the house of

Collinet, whose failure in 1814 had caused the Lorrains a loss of twentyfour thousand francs, had gone to

America with his children after his disasters. He had too high a courage to remain a ruined man. After eleven

years of untold effort crowned by success he returned to Nantes to recover his position, leaving his eldest son

in charge of his transatlantic house. He found Madame Lorrain of PenHoel in the institution of

SaintJacques, and was witness of the resignation with which this most unfortunate of his creditors bore her

"God forgive you!" said the old woman, "since you give me on the borders of my grave the means of securing

the happiness of my dear granddaughter; but alas! it will not clear the debts of my poor husband!"

Monsieur Collinet made over to the widow both the capital and the accrued interest, amounting to about

fortytwo thousand francs. His other creditors, prosperous, rich, and intelligent merchants, had easily born

their losses, whereas the misfortunes of the Lorrains seemed so irremediable to old Monsieur Collinet that he

promised the widow to pay off her husband's debts, to the amount of forty thousand francs more. When the

Bourse of Nantes heard of this generous reparation they wished to receive Collinet to their board before his

certificates were granted by the Royal court at Rennes; but the merchant refused the honor, preferring to

Madame Lorrain had received the money only the day before the post brought her Brigaut's letter, enclosing

that of Pierrette. Her first thought had been, as she signed the receipt: "Now I can live with my Pierrette and

Therefore the moment she had read the fatal letters she made instant preparations to start for Provins. She left

Nantes that night by the mail; for some one had explained to her its celerity. In Paris she took the diligence

for Troyes, which passes through Provins, and by halfpast eleven at night she reached Frappier's, where

Brigaut, shocked at her despairing looks, told her of Pierrette's state and promised to bring the poor girl to her

instantly. His words so terrified the grandmother that she could not control her impatience and followed him

to the square. When Pierrette screamed, the horror of that cry went to her heart as sharply as it did to

Brigaut's. Together they would have roused the neighborhood if Rogron, in his terror, had not opened the

door. The scream of the young girl at bay gave her grandmother the sudden strength of anger with which she

carried her dear Pierrette in her arms to Frappier's house, where Madame Frappier hastily arranged Brigaut's

own room for the old woman and her treasure. In that poor room, on a bed halfmade, the sufferer was

deposited; and there she fainted away, holding her hand still clenched, wounded, bleeding, with the nails deep

bedded in the flesh. Brigaut, Frappier, his wife, and the old woman stood looking at Pierrette in silence, all

Pierrette, overcome by the sleep which follows all abnormal displays of strength, and dimly conscious that

she was safe from violence, gradually unbent her fingers. Brigaut's letter fell from them like an answer.

"They tried to take my letter from her," said Brigaut, falling on his knees and picking up the lines in which he

had told his little friend to come instantly and softly away from the house. He kissed with pious love the

It was a sight that made those present tremble when they saw the old gray woman, a sublime spectre, standing

beside her grandchild's pillow. Terror and vengeance wrote their fierce expressions in the wrinkles that lined

her skin of yellow ivory; her forehead, half hidden by the straggling meshes of her gray hair, expressed a

solemn anger. She read, with a power of intuition given to the aged when near their grave, Pierrette's whole

life, on which her mind had dwelt throughout her journey. She divined the illness of her darling, and knew

that she was threatened with death. Two big tears painfully rose in her wan gray eyes, from which her

troubles had worn both lashes and eyebrows, two pearls of anguish, forming within them and giving them a

dreadful brightness; then each tear swelled and rolled down the withered cheek, but did not wet it.

She fell on her knees which struck sharp blows on the bricklaid floor, making a vow no doubt to Saint Anne

She took him by the shoulder and gave him a despotic push to send him from the room.

"I was coming, my lad, when you wrote me; I am rich,here, take this," she cried, recalling him, and

unfastening as she spoke the strings that tied her shortgown. Then she drew a paper from her bosom in

which were fortytwo bankbills, saying, "Take what is necessary, and bring back the greatest doctor in

"Keep those," said Frappier; "he can't change thousand franc notes now. I have money, and the diligence will

be passing presently; he can certainly find a place on it. But before he goes we had better consult Doctor

Martener; he will tell us the best physician in Paris. The diligence won't pass for over an hour,we have

Brigaut woke up Monsieur Martener, and brought him at once. The doctor was not a little surprised to find

Mademoiselle Lorrain at Frappier's. Brigaut told him of the scene that had just taken place at the Rogrons';

but even so the doctor did not at first suspect the horror of it, nor the extent of the injury done. Martener gave

the address of the celebrated Horace Bianchon, and Brigaut started for Paris by the diligence. Monsieur

Martener then sat down and examined first the bruised and bloody hand which lay outside the bed.

"No; the horrible woman to whom I had the misfortune to trust her was murdering her," said the

grandmother. "My poor Pierrette was screaming 'Help! help! I'm dying,'enough to touch the heart of an

"But why was it?" said the doctor, feeling Pierrette's pulse. "She is very ill," he added, examining her with a

light. "She must have suffered terribly; I don't understand why she has not been properly cared for."

"I shall complain to the authorities," said the grandmother. "Those Rogrons asked me for my child in a letter,

saying they had twelve thousand francs a year and would take care of her; had they the right to make her their

"They did not choose to see the most visible of all maladies to which young girls are liable. She needed the

Pierrette was awakened by the light which Madame Frappier was holding near her face, and by the horrible

"There's an abscess," said the doctor, after feeling the head for a long time and questioning Pierrette on her

sufferings. "You must tell us all, my child, so that we may know how to cure you. Why is your hand like this?

"Make her talk," said the doctor to the grandmother, "and find out the whole truth. I will await the arrival of

the doctor from Paris; and we will send for the surgeon in charge of the hospital here, and have a

consultation. The case seems to me a very serious one. Meantime I will send you a quieting draught so that

Left alone with her granddaughter the old Breton woman exerted her influence over the child and made her

tell all; she let her know that she had money enough now for all three, and promised that Brigaut should live

with them. The poor girl admitted her martyrdom, not imagining the events to which her admissions would

give rise. The monstrosity of two beings without affection and without conception of family life opened to

the old woman a world of woe as far from her knowledge as the morals of savages may have seemed to the

The arrival of her grandmother, the certainty of living with her in comfort soothed Pierrette's mind as the

sleeping draught soothed her body. The old woman watched her darling, kissing her forehead, hair, and

hands, as the holy women of old kissed the hands of Jesus when they laid him in the tomb.

At nine o'clock that morning Monsieur Martener went to see Monsieur Tiphaine, and related to him the scene

between Pierrette and Sylvie, and the tortures of all kinds, moral and physical, to which the Rogrons had

subjected their cousin, and the two alarming forms of illness which their cruelty had developed. Monsieur

Tiphaine sent for Auffray the notary, one of Pierrette's own relations on the maternal side.

At this particular time the war between the Vinet party and the Tiphaine party was at its height. The scandals

which the Rogrons and their adherents were disseminating through the town about the liaison of Madame

Tiphaine's mother with the banker du Tillet, and the bankruptcy of her father (a forger, they said), were all the

more exasperating to the Tiphaines because these things were malicious truths, not libels. Such wounds cut

deep; they go to the quick of feelings and of interests. These speeches, repeated to the partisans of the

Tiphaines by the same mouths which told the Rogrons of the sneers of "those women" of the Tiphaine clique,

fed the hatreds of both sides, now increased by the political element. The animosities caused at this time in

France by the spirit of party, the violences of which were excessive, were everywhere mixed up, as in

Provins, with selfish schemes and wounded or vindictive individual interests. Each party eagerly seized on

whatever might injure the rival party. Personal hatreds and selflove mingled as much as political animosity

in even the smallest matters, and were carried to hitherto unheardof lengths. A whole town would be roused

to excitement over some private struggle, until it took the character of a political debate.

Monsieur Tiphaine at once perceived in the case of Pierrette against the Rogrons a means of humbling,

mortifying, and dishonoring the masters of that salon where plans against the monarchy were made and an

opposition journal born. The public prosecutor was called in; and together with Monsieur Auffray the notary,

Pierrette's relation, and Monsieur Martener, a cautious consultation was held in the utmost secrecy as to the

proper course to follow. Monsieur Martener agreed to advise Pierrette's grandmother to apply to the courts to

have Auffray appointed guardian to his young relation. The guardian could then convene a "Family Council,"

and, backed by the testimony of three doctors, demand the girl's release from the authority of the Rogrons.

The affair thus managed would have to go before the courts, and the public prosecutor, Monsieur Lesourd,

Towards midday all Provins was roused by the strange news of what had happened during the night at the

Rogrons'. Pierrette's cries had been faintly heard, though they were soon over. No one had risen to inquire

what they meant, but every one said the next day, "Did you hear those screams about one in the morning?"

Gossip and comments soon magnified the horrible drama, and a crowd collected in front of Frappier's shop,

asking the worthy cabinetmaker for information, and hearing from him how Pierrette was brought to his

Towards one in the afternoon the postchaise of Doctor Bianchon, who was accompanied by Brigaut,

stopped before the house, and Madame Frappier went at once to summon Monsieur Martener and the surgeon

in charge of the hospital. Thus the gossip of the town received confirmation. The Rogrons were declared to

have illused their cousin deliberately, and to have come near killing her. Vinet heard the news while

attending to his business in the law courts; he left everything and hurried to the Rogrons. Rogron and his

sister had just finished breakfast. Sylvie was reluctant to tell her brother of her discomfiture of the night

before; but he pressed her with questions, to which she would make no answer than, "That's not your

business." She went and came from the kitchen to the diningroom on pretence of preparing the breakfast,

"You will be arrested on a criminal charge," replied Vinet, "from the way things are now going about

"First of all," said the lawyer, looking at Sylvie, "explain to me without concealment and as if you stood

before God, what happened in this house last nightthey talk of amputating Pierrette's hand."

Mademoiselle Rogron related the scene, trying to excuse herself; but, prodded with questions, she

"If you have only injured her fingers you will be taken before the police court for a misdemeanor; but if they

cut off her hand you may be tried at the Assizes for a worse offence. The Tiphaines will do their best to get

Sylvie, more dead than alive, confessed her jealousy, and, what was harder to do, confessed also that her

"Heavens, what a case this will make!" cried the lawyer. "You and your brother may be ruined by it; you will

be abandoned by most people whether you win or lose. If you lose, you will have to leave Provins."

"Oh, my dear Monsieur Vinet, you who are such a great lawyer," said Rogron, terrified, "advise us! save us!"

The crafty Vinet worked the terror of the two imbeciles to its utmost, declaring that Madame and

Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf might be unwilling to enter their house again. To be abandoned by women of

their rank would be a terrible condemnation. At length, after an hour of adroit manoeuvring, it was agreed

that Vinet must have some powerful motive in taking the case, that would impress the minds of all Provins

and explain his efforts on behalf of the Rogrons. This motive they determined should be Rogron's marriage to

Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf; it should be announced that very day and the banns published on Sunday. The

contract could be drawn immediately. Mademoiselle Rogron agreed, in consideration of the marriage, to

appear in the contract as settling her capital on her brother, retaining only the income of it. Vinet made

Rogron and his sister comprehend the necessity of antedating the document by two or three days, so as to

commit the mother and daughter in the eyes of the public and give them a reason for continuing their visits.

"Sign that contract and I'll take upon myself to get you safely out of this affair," said the lawyer. "There will

be a terrible fight; but I will put my whole soul into ityou'll have to make me a votive offering."

By halfpast eleven the lawyer had plenary powers to draw the contract and conduct the defence of the

Rogrons. At twelve o'clock application was made to Monsieur Tiphaine, as a judge sitting in chambers,

against Brigaut and the widow Lorrain for having abducted Pierrette Lorrain, a minor, from the house of her

legal guardian. In this way the bold lawyer became the aggressor and made Rogron the injured party. He

The judge postponed the hearing till four o'clock. Needless to describe the excitement in the town. Monsieur

Tiphaine knew that by three o'clock the consultation of doctors would be over and their report drawn up; he

wished Auffray, as surrogateguardian, to be at the hearing armed with that report.

The announcement of Rogron's marriage and the sacrifices made to it by Sylvie in the contract alienated two

important supporters from the brother and sister, namely,Mademoiselle Habert and the colonel, whose

hopes were thus annihilated. They remained, however, ostensibly on the Rogron side for the purpose of

injuring it. Consequently, as soon as Monsieur Martener mentioned the alarming condition of Pierrette's head,

Celeste and the colonel told of the blow she had given herself during the evening when Sylvie had forced her

to leave the salon; and they related the old maid's barbarous and unfeeling comments, with other statements

proving her cruelty to her suffering cousin. Vinet had foreseen this storm; but he had secured the entire

fortune of the Rogrons for Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, and he promised himself that in a few weeks she

should be mistress of the Rogron house, and reign with him over Provins, and even bring about a fusion with

From midday to four o'clock all the ladies of the Tiphaine clique sent to inquire after Mademoiselle Lorrain.

She, poor girl, was wholly ignorant of the commotion she was causing in the little town. In the midst of her

sufferings she was ineffably happy in recovering her grandmother and Brigaut, the two objects of her

affection. Brigaut's eyes were constantly full of tears. The old grandmother sat by the bed and caressed her

darling. To the three doctors she told every detail she had obtained from Pierrette as to her life in the Rogron

house. Horace Bianchon expressed his indignation in vehement language. Shocked at such barbarity he

insisted on all the physicians in the town being called in to see the case; the consequence was that Dr.

Neraud, the friend of the Rogrons, was present. The report was unanimously signed. It is useless to give a text

of it here. If Moliere's medical terms were barbarous, those of modern science have the advantage of being so

clear that the explanation of Pierrette's malady, though natural and unfortunately common, horrified all ears.

At four o'clock, after the usual rising of the court, president Tiphaine again took his seat, when Madame

Lorrain, accompanied by Monsieur Auffray and Brigaut and a crowd of interested persons, entered the

courtroom. Vinet was alone. This contrast struck the minds of those present. The lawyer, who still wore his

robe, turned his cold face to the judge, settled his spectacles on his pallid green eyes, and then in a shrill,

persistent voice he stated that two strangers had forced themselves at night into the Rogron domicile and had

abducted therefrom the minor Lorrain. The legal rights were with the guardian, who now demanded the

"If the judge," he said, "will admit the report, which I hold in my hand, signed by one of the most famous

physicians in Paris, and by all the physicians in Provins, he will understand not only that the demand of the

Sieur Rogron is senseless, but also that the grandmother of the minor had grave cause to instantly remove her

from her persecutors. Here are the facts. The report of these physicians attribute the almost dying condition of

the said minor to the illtreatment she has received from the Sieur Rogron and his sister. We shall, as the law

directs, convoke a Family Council with the least possible delay, and discuss the question as to whether or not

the guardian should be deposed. And we now ask that the minor be not returned to the domicile of the said

guardian but that she be confided to some member of her family who shall be designated by the judge."

Vinet replied, declaring that the physicians' report ought to have been submitted to him in order that he might

"Not submitted to your side," said the judge, severely, "but possibly to the procureur du roi. The case is

"Whereas it appears, from a deliberate and unanimous report of all the physicians of this town, together with

Doctor Bianchon of the medical faculty of Paris, that the minor Lorrain, claimed by JeromeDenis Rogron,

her guardian, is extremely ill in consequence of illtreatment and personal assault in the house of the said

"We, president of the court of Provins, passing upon the said petition, order that until the Family Council is

held the minor Lorrain is not to be returned to the household of her said guardian, but shall be kept in that of

"And further, considering the state in which the said minor now is, and the traces of violence which,

according to the report of the physicians, are now upon her person, we commission the attending physician

and the surgeon in charge of the hospital of Provins to visit her, and in case the injuries from the said assault

become alarming, the matter will be held to await the action of the criminal courts; and this without prejudice

This severe judgment was read out by President Tiphaine in a loud and distinct voice.

"Why not send them to the galleys at once?" said Vinet. "And all this fuss about a girl who was carrying on

an intrigue with an apprentice to a cabinetmaker! If the case goes on in this way," he cried, insolently, "we

Vinet left the courtroom, and went among the chief men of his party to explain Rogron's position, declaring

that he had never so much as given a flip to his cousin, and that the judge had viewed him much less as

To hear Vinet, people might have supposed that the Tiphaines were making a great fuss about nothing; the

mounting was bringing forth a mouse. Sylvie, an eminently virtuous and pious woman, had discovered an

intrigue between her brother's ward and a workman, a Breton named Brigaut. The scoundrel knew very well

that the girl would have her grandmother's money, and he wished to seduce her (Vinet to talk of that!).

Mademoiselle Rogron, who had discovered letters proving the depravity of the girl, was not as much to blame

as the Tiphaines were trying to make out. If she did use some violence to get possession of those letters

(which was no wonder, when we consider what Breton obstinacy is), how could Rogron be considered

The lawyer went on to make the matter a partisan affair, and to give it a political color.

"They who listen to only one bell hear only one sound," said the wise men. "Have you heard what Vinet

Frappier's house being thought injurious to Pierrette, owing to the noise in the street which increased the

sufferings in her head, she was taken to that of her surrogate guardian, the change being as necessary

medically as it was judicially. The removal was made with the utmost caution, and was calculated to produce

a great public effect. Pierrette was laid on a mattress and carried on a stretcher by two men; a Gray Sister

walked beside her with a bottle of sal volatile in her hand, while the grandmother, Brigaut, Madame Auffray,

and her maid followed. People were at their windows and doors to see the procession pass. Certainly the state

in which they saw Pierrette, pale as death, gave immense advantage to the party against the Rogrons. The

Auffrays were determined to prove to the whole town that the judge was right in the decision he had given.

Pierrette and her grandmother were installed on the second floor of Monsieur Auffray's house. The notary

and his wife gave her every care with the greatest hospitality, which was not without a little ostentation in it.

Pierrette had her grandmother to nurse her; and Monsieur Martener and the headsurgeon of the hospital

On the evening of this day exaggerations began on both sides. The Rogron salon was crowded. Vinet had

stirred up the whole Liberal party on the subject. The Chargeboeuf ladies dined with the Rogrons, for the

contract was to be signed that evening. Vinet had had the banns posted at the mayor's office in the afternoon.

He made light of the Pierrette affair. If the Provins court was prejudiced, the Royal courts would appreciate

the facts, he said, and the Auffrays would think twice before they flung themselves into such a suit. The

alliance of the Rogrons with the Chargeboeufs was an immense consideration in the minds of a certain class

of people. To them it made the Rogrons as white as snow and Pierrette an evilly disposed little girl, a serpent

In Madame Tiphaine's salon vengeance was had for all the mischievous scandals that the Vinet party had

disseminated for the past two years. The Rogrons were monsters, and the guardian should undergo a criminal

trial. In the Lower town, Pierrette was quite well; in the Upper town she was dying; at the Rogrons' she

scratched her wrist; at Madame Tiphaine's her fingers were fractured and one was to be cut off. The next day

the "Courrier de Provins," had a plausible article, extremely wellwritten, a masterpiece of insinuations

mixed with legal points, which showed that there was no case whatever against Rogron. The "Bee hive,"

which did not appear till two days later, could not answer without becoming defamatory; it replied, however,

The Family Council was selected by the juge de paix of the canton of Provins, and consisted of Rogron and

the two Messieurs Auffray, the nearest relatives, and Monsieur Ciprey, nephew of Pierrette's maternal

grandmother. To these were joined Monsieur Habert, Pierrette's confessor, and Colonel Gouraud, who had

always professed himself a comrade and friend of her father, Colonel Lorrain. The impartiality of the judge in

these selections was much applauded,Monsieur Habert and Colonel Gouraud being considered the firm

The serious situation in which Rogron found himself made him ask for the assistance of a lawyer (and he

named Vinet) at the Family Council. By this manoeuvre, evidently advised by Vinet himself, Rogron

succeeded in postponing the meeting of the council till the end of December. At that time Monsieur Tiphaine

and his wife would be settled in Paris for the opening of the Chambers; and the ministerial party would be left

without its head. Vinet had already worked upon Desfondrilles, the deputyjudge, in case the matter should

Vinet spoke for three hours before the Family Council; he proved the existence of an intrigue between

Pierrette and Brigaut, which justified all Mademoiselle Rogron's severity. He showed how natural it was that

the guardian should have left the management of his ward to a woman; he dwelt on the fact that Rogron had

not interfered with Pierrette's education as planned by his sister Sylvie. But in spite of Vinet's efforts the

Council were unanimous in removing Rogron from the guardianship. Monsieur Auffray was appointed in his

place, and Monsieur Ciprey was made surrogate. The Council summoned before it and examined Adele, the

servantwoman, who testified against her late masters; also Mademoiselle Habert, who related the cruel

remarks made by Mademoiselle Rogron on the evening when Pierrette had given herself a frightful blow,

heard by all the company, and the speech of Madame de Chargeboeuf about the girl's health. Brigaut

produced the letter he had received from Pierrette, which proved their innocence and stated her illtreatment.

Proof was given that the condition of the minor was the result of neglect on the part of the guardian, who was

responsible for all that concerned his ward. Pierrette's illness had been apparent to every one, even to persons

in the town who were strangers to the family, yet the guardian had done nothing for her. The charge of ill

treatment was therefore sustained against Rogron; and the case would now go before the public.

Rogron, advised by Vinet, opposed the acceptance of the report of the Council by the court. The authorities

then intervened in consequence of Pierrette's state, which was daily growing worse. The trial of the case,

though placed at once upon the docket, was postponed until the month of March, 1828, to wait events.

Meantime Rogron's marriage with Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf took place. Sylvie moved to the second

floor of the house, which she shared with Madame de Chargeboeuf, for the first floor was entirely taken up

by the new wife. The beautiful Madame Rogron succeeded to the social place of the beautiful Madame

Tiphaine. The influence of the marriage was immense. No one now came to visit Sylvie, but Madame

Sustained by the influence of his motherinlaw and the bankers du Tillet and Nucingen, Monsieur Tiphaine

was fortunate enough to do some service to the administration; he became one of its chief orators, was made

judge in the civil courts, and obtained the appointment of his nephew Lesourd to his own vacant place as

president of the court of Provins. This appointment greatly annoyed Desfondrilles. The Keeper of the Seals

sent down one of his own proteges to fill Lesourd's place. The promotion of Monsieur Tiphaine and his

translation to Paris were therefore of no benefit at all to the Vinet party; but Vinet nevertheless made a clever

use of the result. He had always told the Provins people that they were being used as a steppingstone to raise

the crafty Madame Tiphaine into grandeur; Tiphaine himself had tricked them; Madame Tiphaine despised

both Provins and its people in her heart, and would never return there again. Just at this crisis Monsieur

Tiphaine's father died; his son inherited a fine estate and sold his house in Provins to Monsieur Julliard. The

sale proved to the minds of all how little the Tiphaines thought of Provins. Vinet was right; Vinet had been a

true prophet. These things had great influence on the question of Pierrette's guardianship.

Thus the dreadful martyrdom brutally inflicted on the poor child by two imbecile tyrants (which led, through

its consequences, to the terrible operation of trepanning, performed by Monsieur Martener under the advice

of Doctor Bianchon),all this horrible drama reduced to judicial form was left to float in the vile mess

called in legal parlance the calendar. The case was made to drag through the delays and the interminable

labyrinths of the law, by the shufflings of an unprincipled lawyer; and during all this time the calumniated

Monsieur Martener, together with the Auffray family, were soon charmed by the beauty of Pierrette's nature

and the character of her old grandmother, whose feelings, ideas, and ways bore the stamp of Roman

Doctor Martener struggled bravely with death, which already grasped its prey. From the first, Bianchon and

the hospital surgeon had considered Pierrette doomed; and there now took place between the doctor and the

disease, the former relying on Pierrette's youth, one of those struggles which physicians alone

comprehend,the reward of which, in case of success, is never found in the venal pay nor in the patients

themselves, but in the gentle satisfaction of conscience, in the invisible ideal palm gathered by true artists

from the contentment which fills their soul after accomplishing a noble work. The physician strains towards

good as an artist towards beauty, each impelled by that grand sentiment which we call virtue. This daily

contest wiped out of Doctor Martener's mind the petty irritations of that other contest of the Tiphaines and the

Vinets,as always happens to men when they find themselves face to face with a great and real misery to

Monsieur Martener had begun his career in Paris; but the cruel activity of the city and its insensibility to its

masses of suffering had shocked his gentle soul, fitted only for the quiet life of the provinces. Moreover, he

was under the yoke of his beautiful native land. He returned to Provins, where he married and settled, and

cared almost lovingly for the people, who were to him like a large family. During the whole of Pierrette's

illness he was careful not to speak of her. His reluctance to answer the questions of those who asked about

her was so evident that persons soon ceased to put them. Pierrette was to him, what indeed she truly was, a

poem, mysterious, profound, vast in suffering, such as doctors find at times in their terrible experience. He

felt an admiration for this delicate young creature which he would not share with any one.

This feeling of the physician for his patient was, however, unconsciously communicated (like all true

feelings) to Monsieur and Madame Auffray, whose house became, so long as Pierrette was in it, quiet and

silent. The children, who had formerly played so joyously with her, agreed among themselves with the loving

grace of childhood to be neither noisy nor troublesome. They made it a point of honor to be good because

Pierrette was ill. Monsieur Auffray's house was in the Upper town, beneath the ruins of the Chateau, and it

was built upon a sort of terrace formed by the overthrow of the old ramparts. The occupants could have a

view of the valley from the little fruitgarden enclosed by walls which overlooked the town. The roofs of the

other houses came to about the level of the lower wall of this garden. Along the terrace ran a path, by which

Monsieur Auffray's study could be entered through a glass door; at the other end of the path was an arbor of

grape vines and a figtree, beneath which stood a round table, a bench and some chairs, painted green.

Pierrette's bedroom was above the study of her new guardian. Madame Lorrain slept in a cot beside her

grandchild. From her window Pierrette could see the whole of the glorious valley of Provins, which she

hardly knew, so seldom had she left that dreadful house of the Rogrons. When the weather was fine she loved

to drag herself, resting on her grandmother's arm, to the vineclad arbor. Brigaut, unable to work, came three

times a day to see his little friend; he was gnawed by a grief which made him indifferent to life. He lay in

wait like a dog for Monsieur Martener, and followed him when he left the house. The old grandmother, drunk

with grief, had the courage to conceal her despair; she showed her darling the smiling face she formerly wore

at PenHoel. In her desire to produce that illusion in the girl's mind, she made her a little Breton cap like the

one Pierrette had worn on her first arrival in Provins; it made the darling seem more like her childlike self; in

it she was delightful to look upon, her sweet face circled with a halo of cambric and fluted lace. Her skin,

white with the whiteness of unglazed porcelain, her forehead, where suffering had printed the semblance of

deep thought, the purity of the lines refined by illness, the slowness of the glances, and the occasional fixity

of the eyes, made Pierrette an almost perfect embodiment of melancholy. She was served by all with a sort of

fanaticism; she was felt to be so gentle, so tender, so loving. Madame Martener sent her piano to her sister

Madame Auffray, thinking to amuse Pierrette who was passionately fond of music. It was a poem to watch

her listening to a theme of Weber, or Beethoven, or Herold,her eyes raised, her lips silent, regretting no

doubt the life escaping her. The cure Peroux and Monsieur Habert, her two religious comforters, admired her

saintly resignation. Surely the seraphic perfection of young girls and young men marked with the hectic of

death, is a wonderful fact worthy of the attention alike of philosophers and of heedless minds. He who has

ever seen one of these sublime departures from this life can never remain, or become, an unbeliever. Such

beings exhale, as it were, a celestial fragrance; their glances speak of God; the voices are eloquent in the

simplest words; often they ring like some seraphic instrument revealing the secrets of the future. When

Monsieur Martener praised her for having faithfully followed a harsh prescription the little angel replied, and

"I want to live, dear Monsieur Martener; but less for myself than for my grandmother, for my Brigaut, for all

The first time she went into the garden on a beautiful sunny day in November attended by all the household,

"No, now that I have no sufferings but those God sends I can bear all," she said. "The joy of being loved

That was the only time (and then vaguely) that she ever alluded to her horrible martyrdom at the Rogrons,

whom she never mentioned, and of whom no one reminded her, knowing well how painful the memory must

"Dear Madame Auffray," she said one day at noon on the terrace, as she gazed at the valley, warmed by a

glorious sun and colored with the glowing tints of autumn, "my death in your house gives me more happiness

Monsieur Martener corresponded with Doctor Bianchon, and did nothing of importance without his advice.

He hoped in the first place to regular the functions of nature and to draw away the abscess in the head through

the ear. The more Pierrette suffered, the more he hoped. He gained some slight success at times, and that was

a great triumph. For several days Pierrette's appetite returned and enabled her to take nourishing food for

which her illness had given her a repugnance; the color of her skin changed; but the condition of her head

was terrible. Monsieur Martener entreated the great physician his adviser to come down. Bianchon came,

stayed two days, and resolved to undertake an operation. To spare the feelings of poor Martener he went to

Paris and brought back with him the celebrated Desplein. Thus the operation was performed by the greatest

surgeon of ancient or modern times; but that terrible diviner said to Martener as he departed with Bianchon,

"Nothing but a miracle can save her. As Horace told you, caries of the bone has begun. At her age the bones

The operation was performed at the beginning of March, 1828. During all that month, distressed by Pierrette's

horrible sufferings, Monsieur Martener made several journeys to Paris; there he consulted Desplein and

Bianchon, and even went so far as to propose to them an operation of the nature of lithotrity, which consists

in passing into the head a hollow instrument by the help of which an heroic remedy can be applied to the

diseased bone, to arrest the progress of the caries. Even the bold Desplein dared not attempt that highhanded

surgical measure, which despair alone had suggested to Martener. When he returned home from Paris he

seemed to his friends morose and gloomy. He was forced to announce on that fatal evening to the Auffrays

and Madame Lorrain and to the two priests and Brigaut that science could do no more for Pierrette, whose

recovery was now in God's hands only. The consternation among them was terrible. The grandmother made a

vow, and requested the priests to say a mass every morning at daybreak before Pierrette rose,a mass at

The trial came on. While the victim lay dying, Vinet was calumniating her in court. The judge approved and

accepted the report of the Family Council, and Vinet instantly appealed. The newly appointed procureur du

roi made a requisition which necessitated fresh evidence. Rogron and his sister were forced to give bail to

avoid going to prison. The order for fresh evidence included that of Pierrette herself. When Monsieur

Desfondrilles came to the Auffrays' to receive it, Pierrette was dying, her confessor was at her bedside about

to administer extreme unction. At that moment she entreated all present to forgive her cousins as she herself

forgave them, saying with her simple good sense that the judgment of these things belonged to God alone.

"Grandmother," she said, "leave all you have to Brigaut" (Brigaut burst into tears); "and," continued Pierrette,

"give a thousand francs to that kind Adele who warmed my bed. If Adele had remained with my cousins I

It was at three o'clock on the Tuesday of Easter week, on a beautiful, bright day, that the angel ceased to

suffer. Her heroic grandmother wished to watch all that night with the priests, and to sew with her stiff old

fingers her darling's shroud. Towards evening Brigaut left the Auffray's house and went to Frappier's.

He cast a look upon the different woods piled up around the shop,a look of painful meaning.

"I understand you, Brigaut," said his worthy master. "Take all you want." And he showed him the oaken

He passed the night in planing and fitting Pierrette's coffin, and more than once his plane took off at a single

pass a ribbon of wood which was wet with tears. The good man Frappier smoked his pipe and watched him

At daybreak Brigaut went out to fetch the lead to line the coffin. By a strange chance, the sheets of lead cost

just the sum he had given Pierrette for her journey from Nantes to Provins. The brave Breton, who was able

to resist the awful pain of himself making the coffin of his dear one and lining with his memories those burial

planks, could not bear up against this strange reminder. His strength gave way; he was not able to lift the

lead, and the plumber, seeing this, came with him, and offered to accompany him to the house and solder the

The Breton burned the plane and all the tools he had used. Then he settled his accounts with Frappier and

bade him farewell. The heroism with which the poor lad personally performed, like the grandmother, the last

offices for Pierrette made him a sharer in the awful scene which crowned the tyranny of the Rogrons.

Brigaut and the plumber reached the house of Monsieur Auffray just in time to decide by their own main

force an infamous and shocking judicial question. The room where the dead girl lay was full of people, and

presented to the eyes of the two men a singular sight. The Rogron emissaries were standing beside the body

of their victim, to torture her even after death. The corpse of the child, solemn in its beauty, lay on the

cotbed of her grandmother. Pierrette's eyes were closed, the brown hair smoothed upon her brow, the body

Before the bed, on her knees, her hair in disorder, her hands stretched out, her face on fire, the old Lorrain

At the foot of the bed stood Monsieur Auffray and the two priests. The tapers were still burning.

Opposite to the grandmother was the surgeon of the hospital, with an assistant, and near him stood Doctor

Neraud and Vinet. The surgeon wore his dissecting apron; the assistant had opened a case of instruments and

This scene was interrupted by the noise of the coffin which Brigaut and the plumber set down upon the floor.

Then Brigaut, advancing, was horrified at the sight of Madame Lorrain, who was now weeping.

"What is the matter?" he asked, standing beside her and grasping the chisel convulsively in his hand.

"This," said the old woman, "this, Brigaut: they want to open the body of my child and cut into her head, and

"Monsieur Auffray," said Brigaut, as white as his dead companion, "I hear you because you are Monsieur

"Is there law? is there justice?" cried the Breton. "Justice, this is it!" and he advanced to the lawyer and the

"My friend," said the curate, "the law has been invoked by the lawyer of Monsieur Rogron, who is under the

weight of a serious accusation; and it is impossible for us to refuse him the means of justification. The lawyer

of Monsieur Rogron claims that if the poor child died of an abscess in her head her former guardian cannot be

blamed, for it is proved that Pierrette concealed the effects of the blow which she gave to herself"

"Your client," cried the Breton, "shall go to hell and I to the scaffold; for if one of you dares to touch her

"This is interference with the law," said Vinet. "I shall instantly inform the court."

"Oh, my son!" cried the old woman, rising from her knees and falling on Brigaut's neck, "let us bury her

Monsieur Auffray hastened to his brotherinlaw, Monsieur Lesourd, to try and settle the matter. Vinet was

not unwilling. Pierrette being dead the suit about the guardianship fell, of course, to the ground. All the astute

At midday Monsieur Desfondrilles made his report on the case, and the court rendered a decision that there

Rogron dared not go to Pierrette's funeral, at which the whole town was present. Vinet wished to force him

Brigaut left Provins after watching the filling up of the grave where Pierrette lay, and went on foot to Paris.

He wrote a petition to the Dauphiness asking, in the name of his father, that he might enter the Royal guard,

to which he was at once admitted. When the expedition to Algiers was undertaken he wrote to her again, to

obtain employment in it. He was then a sergeant; Marshal Bourmont gave him an appointment as

sublieutenant in a line regiment. The major's son behaved like a man who wished to die. Death has,

however, respected Jacques Brigaut up to the present time; although he has distinguished himself in all the

recent expeditions he has never yet been wounded. He is now major in a regiment of infantry. No officer is

more taciturn or more trustworthy. Outside of his duty he is almost mute; he walks alone and lives

mechanically. Every one divines and respects a hidden sorrow. He possesses fortysix thousand francs,

At the elections of 1830 Vinet was made a deputy. The services he rendered the new government have now

earned him the position of procureurgeneral. His influence is such that he will always remain a deputy.

Rogron is receivergeneral in the same town where Vinet fulfils his legal functions; and by one of those

curious tricks of chance which do so often occur, Monsieur Tiphaine is president of the Royal court in the

same town,for the worthy man gave in his adhesion to the dynasty of July without the slightest hesitation.

The exbeautiful Madame Tiphaine lives on excellent terms with the beautiful Madame Rogron. Vinet is

As to the imbecile Rogron, he makes such remarks as, "LouisPhilippe will never be really king till he is able

The speech is evidently not his own. His health is failing, which allows Madame Rogron to hope she may

soon marry the General Marquis de Montriveau, peer of France, who commands the department, and is

paying her attentions. Vinet is in his element, seeking victims; he never believes in the innocence of an

accused person. This thoroughbred prosecutor is held to be one of the most amiable men on the circuit; and

he is no less liked in Paris and in the Chamber; at court he is a charming courtier.

According to a certain promise made by Vinet, General Baron Gouraud, that noble relic of our glorious

armies, married a Mademoiselle Matifat, twentyfive years old, daughter of a druggist in the rue des

Lombards, whose dowry was a hundred thousand francs. He commands (as Vinet prophesied) a department

in the neighborhood of Paris. He was named peer of France for his conduct in the riots which occurred during

the ministry of Casimir Perier. Baron Gouraud was one of the generals who took the church of SaintMerry,

delighted to rap those rascally civilians who had vexed him for years over the knuckles; for which service he

None of the personages connected with Pierrette's death ever felt the slightest remorse about it. Monsieur

Desfondrilles is still archaeological, but, in order to compass his own election, the procureur general Vinet

took pains to have him appointed president of the Provins court. Sylvie has a little circle, and manages her

brother's property; she lends her own money at high interest, and does not spend more than twelve hundred

From time to time, when some former son or daughter of Provins returns from Paris to settle down, you may

hear them ask, as they leave Mademoiselle Rogron's house, "Wasn't there a painful story against the

"Mere prejudice," replies Monsieur Desfondrilles. "Certain persons tried to make us believe falsehoods. Out

of kindness of heart the Rogrons took in a girl named Pierrette, quite pretty but with no money. Just as she

was growing up she had an intrigue with a young man, and stood at her window barefooted talking to him.

The lovers passed notes to each other by a string. She took cold in this way and died, having no constitution.

The Rogrons behaved admirably. They made no claim on certain property which was to come to her,they

gave it all up to the grandmother. The moral of it was, my good friend, that the devil punishes those who try

"Frappier consults his winecellar more than he does his memory," remarked another of Mademoiselle

Two men think of Pierrette daily: Doctor Martener and Major Brigaut; they alone know the hideous truth.

To give that truth its true proportions we must transport the scene to the Rome of the middle ages, where a

sublime young girl, Beatrice Cenci, was brought to the scaffold by motives and intrigues that were almost

identical with those which laid our Pierrette in her grave. Beatrice Cenci had but one defender,an artist, a

painter. In our day history, and living men, on the faith of Guido Reni's portrait, condemn the Pope, and know

We must all agree that legality would be a fine thing for social scoundrelism IF THERE WERE NO GOD.

Bianchon, Horace Father Goriot The Atheist's Mass Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost

Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The

Government Clerks A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side of History

The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Muse of the Department

The Imaginary Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon

Desplein The Atheist's Mass Cousin Pons Lost Illusions The Thirteen The Government Clerks A Bachelor's

Establishment The Seamy Side of History Modeste Mignon Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine

Montriveau, General Marquis Armand de The Thirteen Father Goriot Lost Illusions A Distinguished

Nucingen, Baron Frederic de The Firm of Nucingen Father Goriot Cesar Birotteau Lost Illusions A

Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a

Princess A Man of Business Cousin Betty The Muse of the Department The Unconscious Humorists

Roguin, Madame Cesar Birotteau At the Sign of the Cat and Racket A Second Home A Daughter of Eve

Tillet, Ferdinand du Cesar Birotteau The Firm of Nucingen The Middle Classes A Bachelor's Establishment

Melmoth Reconciled A Distinguished Provincial at Paris The Secrets of a Princess A Daughter of Eve The