The next Sunday, in putting on my best pantaloons, I found in the right pocket two gold quarter-eagles. Yes! There could now be no doubt. I had misjudged Mrs. Dufour. Her stinginess was all a pretence. Touched with gratitude, yet humiliated, I went to return the gold. It was plain that Madame knew nothing about it. I looked at Estelle, who sat at a window mending a muslin collar. “Can you explain, Mademoiselle?” I asked. “Explain what?” she inquired, as if she had been too absorbed in her own thoughts to hear a word of the conversation. “Can you explain how those gold pieces came into my pocket?” Without the least sign of guilt, she replied, “I cannot explain, sir.” Was she deceiving me? I thought not. Though we had met twice a day at meals for weeks, her demeanor towards me had been always distant and reserved. It was my habit daily, after giving a morning lesson to my pupil, to walk a couple of hours on the Levee. One forenoon, on account of the heat of the weather, I returned home an hour earlier than usual. Henri and his mother were out riding. As I entered the house I heard the sound of the piano, and stopped in the hall to listen. It was Estelle at the instrument. I had left on the music-stand a rough score of my arrangement of that remarkable composition, then newly published in Europe, the music and words of which Colonel Pestal wrote with a link of his fetters on his prison-wall the day before his execution. I had translated the original song, and written it on the same page with the music. What was my astonishment to hear the whole piece,—this new _De Profundis_, this mortal cry from the depths of a proud, indignant heart,—a cry condensed by music into tones the most apt and fervid,—now reproduced by Estelle with such passionate power, such reality of emotion, that I was struck at once with admiration and with horror. They were not, then, for Pestal so much as for Estelle,—those utterances of holy wrath and angelic defiance! The words by themselves are simple,—commonplace, if you will.[18] But, conveyed to the ear through Pestal’s music and Estelle’s voice, they seemed vivid with the very lightning of the soul. As she sang, the victim towered above the oppressor like an archangel above a fiend. The prison-walls fell outward, and the welcoming heavens opened to the triumphant captive. I entered the room. She turned suddenly. Her face had not yet recovered from the expression of those emotions which the song had called up. She rose with the air of an avenging goddess. Then, seeing me, she drew up her clasped hands to her bosom with a gesture full of grace and eloquent with deprecation, and said, “Forgive me if I have disturbed your papers.” “Estelle!” I began. Then, seeing her look of surprise, I said, “Excuse me if the address is too familiar; but I know you by no other name.” “Estelle is all sufficient,” she replied.