The student pulled at his pipe vehemently. Coaxing it from the sulking mood, his expression relaxed, and he breathed forth jets of smoke that he dissipated with his hand. “By no means,” said he. “The moral debility that ensued, however, may have rendered us (I will not say it did) peculiarly susceptible to the complaint of godliness. At any rate, monsieur, we were chosen for a high honour, and----” He paused, sighed, and shook his head pathetically. “It is true, then, that the virgin revealed herself to the lodge-keeper?” said Ned. And he added: “Boppard, my Boppard! I believe you are not, in spite of all, weaned from the fleshpots!” The student smiled foolishly and a little anxiously. “Let me tell you how it began, monsieur,” said he. “The bitter scandal of monseigneur and--and of our poor demoiselle was yet hot in women’s mouths (ah, monsieur, what secret gratification will it not give them, that fall of an envied sister!), when an interest of a different kind withdrew these cankers from feeding on their rose. Baptiste, the little brother of Nicette Legrand, disappeared, and has never been heard of since.” “The child! But, who----?” “Monsieur, it was the Cagots stole him.” “Did they confess to it?” “Confess! the pariahs, the accursed! It is not in nature that wretches so vile should incriminate themselves. But there had been evidence of them in the neighbourhood; one, indeed, had been employed by Draçon--whose farm abuts on the lower grounds of the chateau--to roof a shed with tiles. This Cagot Nicette had seen upon many occasions covertly regarding the child--conversing with him even, and doubtless, with devilish astuteness, corrupting his mind. Two days after the job was completed and the man disappeared, the unhappy infant was nowhere to be found. They sought him far and wide. Nicette was prostrate--inconsolable. She had been foremost in the denunciation of Théroigne. Now, she herself, desolated, defrauded of him to whom she had been as a mother--well, God must judge, monsieur. At last the strange gloating of that sinister creature recurred to her, and she spoke of it. With oaths of frenzy, the villagers armed themselves and broke into the woods, where the miscreants were known to sojourn. Their camp was deserted. They were fled none knew whither; and none to this day has set eyes on them or the little Legrand.” “Or questioned, I’ll swear, the unconscionable flimsiness of such evidence. And Nicette, M. Boppard?” “She wandered like a ghost; in the woods--always in the woods, as if she maddened to somewhere find, hidden under the fern and moss, the mutilated body of her little _fanfan_. You recall, monsieur, the old eaten tree, the despoiled Samson of the forest, that held the moon in its withered arms on a memorable night of jest and revel? _Mon Dieu_! but the ravishing times!” “The tree, my Boppard? Of a surety I remember the tree.”