Madame Famette was more serious than usual on her way to the market. Matters were getting tangled, she thought. Leon Roussel had begun to be a regular Sunday visitor at the cottage, and now three weeks and more had gone by and he had not come; and a gossip who had walked home from church with her overnight had told Madame Famette that Mam'selle Lesage was going to marry a Monsieur Roussel: whether it was Leon or a Monsieur Roussel of some other place than Aubette her gossip could not affirm; and in this uncertainty the mother's heart was troubled. She was very proud of Marie's beauty and graceful ways, and she had thought it a just tribute when the young timber-merchant had asked her permission to call at the cottage; and now, just when she had been expecting that his aunt, La Mere Therese, the superior of the Convent du Sacre Coeur in Aubette, would send for her in order that the demand for her daughter's hand and the preliminaries of the marriage might be settled, had come first Leon Roussel's strange absence and the visits of Nicolas Marais, and now the gossip about Elise Lesage. "I will know the right of it to-day," Madame Famette thinks, and she lashes out at Mouton in an unusual fashion. The first customer at her stall is Madame Houlard, the wife of the tailor and town councillor. "How is Marie?" she says: "the market does not seem itself without Marie Famette." Madame Famette smiles, but she sighs too: "My poor little girl is ill;" and then her eyes rove round the market, and fix on Mademoiselle Lesage bustling in and out among her clients. "Have you then heard that Elise Lesage is to be married?" she says in a low, cautious voice. Madame Houlard's flat, good-tempered face grows troubled: "Ah yes, I have heard some talk; and listen to that noisy fellow;" then she points to Floris Marceau, who is gesticulating and vehement as usual. She is surprised to find her arm tightly grasped by the large hand of the fruit-seller: "Madame Houlard, tell me the truth: who is to marry with Elise Lesage?" Madame Houlard leads a very tranquil life: her husband is the most placid man in Aubette, and she has never had any children to disturb the calm of existence. She is ruffled and shocked by Madame Famette's vehemence. She bridles and releases her plump arm: "Ma foi, my friend! what will you? Gossip comes, and gossip goes. I believe all I hear--that is but convenable--but then, look you, I am quite as willing to believe in the contradiction which so frequently follows. One should never excite one's self about anything: be sure of this, my friend, it is bad for the nerves. What is salsify a bundle to-day?" Madame Famette, as has been said, has a sieve-like nature with regard to the passing away of wrath, but still her anger is easily roused. "It would be simpler to tell me what you have heard," she says in a very snappish accent. "When I want a lecture I can get it from monsieur le cure."