Then, glancing at the letter, she asked what the signature meant. Monsieur le curé, who had paid no attention to it, put on his glasses and soon began to laugh, declaring that he had never seen anything like it, and all he could make out, in place of a name, was the sketch of an ear and an earring with a sort of a heart stuck through it. "Probably," said he, "it is the emblem of some fraternity. All guilds have their badges, and other people can't understand them." But Brulette understood well enough; she seemed a little worried and carried off the letter, to examine it, I don't doubt, with a less indifferent eye than she pretended; for she took it into her head to learn to read, and very secretly she did so, by the help of a former lady's-maid in a noble family, who often came to gossip in a sociable house like my cousin's. It didn't take long for such a clever head as Brulette's to learn all she wanted, and one fine day I was amazed to find she could write songs and hymns as prettily turned as anybody's. I could not help asking her if she had learned these fine things above her station so as to correspond with Joseph, or the handsome muleteer. "As if I cared for a common fellow with earrings!" she cried, laughing. "Do you think I am such an ill-behaved girl as to write to a perfect stranger? But if Joseph comes back educated he will have done a very good thing to get rid of his stupidity; and as for me, I shall not be sorry to be a little less of a goose than I was." "Brulette, Brulette!" I retorted, "you are setting your thoughts outside your own country and your friends. Take care, harm will come of it! I'm not a bit less uneasy about you here than I am about Joseph down there." "You can be easy about me, Tiennet; my head is cool, no matter what people say of me. As for our poor boy, I am troubled enough; it will soon be six months since we heard from him, and that fine muleteer who promised to send us news has never once thought of it. Mariton is miserable at Joseph's neglect of her; for she has never known of his illness, and perhaps he is dead without our suspecting it." I assured her that in that case we should certainly have been informed of the fact, and that no news was always good news in such cases. "You may say what you like," she replied; "I dreamed, two nights ago, that the muleteer arrived here, bringing his bagpipe and the news that José was dead. Ever since I dreamed that I have been sad at heart, and I am sorry I have let so much time go by without thinking of the poor lad or trying to write to him. But how could I have sent my letter?--for I don't even know where he is."