"Quite certain." "Look at me, Pierrette." Pierrette looked at Sylvie. "A man called to you this morning in the square." Pierrette lowered her eyes. "You went to your window, you opened it, and you spoke to him." "No cousin, I went to look out and I saw a peasant." "Pierrette, you have much improved since you made your first communion; you have become pious and obedient, you love God and your relations; I am satisfied with you. I don't say this to puff you up with pride." The horrible creature had mistaken despondency, submission, the silence of wretchedness, for virtues! The sweetest of all consolations to suffering souls, to martyrs, to artists, in the worst of that divine agony which hatred and envy force upon them, is to meet with praise where they have hitherto found censure and injustice. Pierrette raised her grateful eyes to her cousin, feeling that she could almost forgive her for the sufferings she had caused. "But if it is all hypocrisy, if I find you a serpent that I have warmed in my bosom, you will be a wicked girl, an infamous creature!" "I think I have nothing to reproach myself with," said Pierrette, with a painful revulsion of her heart at the sudden change from unexpected praise to the tones of the hyena. "You know that to lie is a mortal sin?" "Yes, cousin." "Well, you are now under the eye of God," said the old maid, with a solemn gesture towards the sky; "swear to me that you did not know that peasant." "I will not swear," said Pierrette. "Ha! he was no peasant, you little viper." Pierrette rushed away like a frightened fawn terrified at her tone. Sylvie called her in a dreadful voice. "The bell is ringing," she answered. "Artful wretch!" thought Sylvie. "She is depraved in mind; and now I am certain the little adder has wound herself round the colonel. She has heard us say he was a baron. To be a baroness! little fool! Ah! I'll get rid of her, I'll apprentice her out, and soon too!" Sylvie was so lost in thought that she did not notice her brother coming down the path and bemoaning the injury the frost had done to his dahlias. "Sylvie! what are you thinking about? I thought you were looking at the fish; sometimes they jump out of the water." "No," said Sylvie. "How did you sleep?" and he began to tell her about his own dreams. "Don't you think my skin is getting _tabid_?"--a word in the Rogron vocabulary. Ever since Rogron had been in love,--but let us not profane the word, --ever since he had desired to marry Mademoiselle de Chargeboeuf, he was very uneasy about himself and his health. At this moment Pierrette came down the garden steps and called to them from a distance that breakfast was ready. At sight of her cousin, Sylvie's skin turned green and yellow, her bile was in commotion. She looked at the floor of the corridor and declared that Pierrette ought to rub it. "I will rub it now if you wish," said the little angel, not aware of the injury such work may do to a young girl.