Two months passed over in this manner, and little Mariette seemed quite reconciled to her situation. With the elasticity of childish hope, she had recovered all her spirits, and no two young, happy, innocent things were ever gayer than we were. Her state of imprisonment, too, was somewhat relaxed; for, in our own town at least, a lull had come upon the political storm, which, as every one knows, came up sobbing, as it were, in fits and starts, like a south-westerly gale, till the full hurricane blew and swept every thing before it. After some hesitation, Father Bonneville permitted her to go out with me into the garden, and there to play amongst the shrubs, now, alas! destitute of flowers, for an hour or two before she went to bed. In the town she was never seen, and with a sort of prescience, which was, perhaps, not extraordinary, the good Father explained to me that it would be wiser to use, as little as possible, the way out of the town by the garden and the tower. He treated me with a degree of confidence and reliance on my intelligence and discretion, which made me very proud. The agitated and terrible state of the country, he said, and the anarchical tendencies which were visible throughout society in France, had induced a number of the most wealthy and influential people to seek a refuge in other lands. Those who had got possession of power, he continued, were naturally anxious to put a stop to this emigration, and a system of espionage, which was well-nigh intolerable, had been established to check it. The advantage we possessed of being able to go in and out of the town when we pleaded, without passing the gales, might be lost to us by the imprudent use of it; and although two or three other citizens, whose houses abutted upon towers of the old wall, had the same facilities, he knew them to be prudent and well-disposed men, who were not likely to call attention to themselves by any incautious act.