Youth always argues from its wishes. They form the goal to which, whatever turns the course may take, the race is always directed in the end. Father Bonneville’s words were very painful to me, and I ventured to strive to persuade him that it would be better to wait a little: that Mariette was well where she was: that something might have occurred to delay Madame de Salins. The good Father shook his head, with a sigh, and he then took a little drawer out of a cabinet, and counted some forty or fifty gold pieces that were within. I could see, however, that there were, at least, three little rolls of thin white paper diapered by the milling of the coin within, and I knew by their similarity and size with the one which I had myself received, that each must contain somewhere about a hundred louis. To me this was Peru; but Father Bonneville, who knew better, sighed over it, and put it back again. One very stormy night the wind blew in sharp, fierce gusts against the front windows, and the rain pattered hard. The streets were almost deserted, and utterly unlighted, as they were in those times, they offered no pleasant promenade on such a night as that. Suddenly the bell rang, as I was sitting by Father Bonneville reading, when Mariette was sound asleep up stairs, and Jeanette was working away in her kitchen. “Who can that be?” said Father Bonneville, turning a little pale. “Stay, Jeanette, stay for a moment;” and he put away one or two things that were lying about, and locked the door of the little cabinet. Now, it might seem a cruelty to keep any one waiting at the door even for a minute or two in the pitiless pelting of the shower; but I forgot to mention in describing the house, that it, and a neighboring house, which bent away from the main into a side street, formed a very obtuse angle, and that between the two there was a little arched entrance overshadowing a flight of steps which led to the good Father’s door. Thus, any visitor was as much sheltered from the rain on the outside, as if he had been in the house itself. Jeanette had, at length, permission to go to the door, and to tell the truth, both Father Bonneville and I peeped out to see who was the applicant who made so late a call. “I wish to see Father Bonneville,” said a woman’s voice, marvelously sweet and pleasant. “Is your business very pressing, madam?” asked Jeanette, adding, “it is late, and just the good Father’s time for going to bed.” “Life and death!” said the visitor. “I _must_ see him, and see him alone.” “Well, madam, come in,” was the reply, and at the same moment Father Bonneville said in a low tone, but it seemed to me with a happy air, “Leave me, François. Go to bed, my son.” I obeyed at once, and in moving across the passage to the kitchen for a light, I crossed the visitor, nearly touching her. All I could see, however, was that she was tall, dignified in carriage, dressed in deep black, and wrapped up in a large mantle with a veil over her head.