"Dearest mother!" the marquise murmured, clasping the old lady to her bosom, "I am so glad you did not! Alas! even to name our martyr king is to rouse a volley of curses." And then the old lady, enchanted to have found a listener who would not interrupt her flow, gabbled on interminably about the condition of the capital. Before daring to decide on a journey she had called in good M. Galland who, contrary to her own views, had considered it an admirable suggestion that the mother should visit the daughter. "If I had known all, wild horses would not have moved me. The threatening attitude of your rustics is more menacing than our mob at home." She failed to add that as she rarely stepped outside the door, she knew but little of the Paris rabble. "The abbé--how nice it must be to have him," she went off at a tangent. "A most engaging man. I remember that when he visited us in Paris I said to your dear father--ah, deary me--he's with the blessed--that it was a miracle to find such breeding in a provincial. You must excuse me, pet, if I seem rude to your husband's brother, but he was brought up in the south somewhere, he told me, where they cannot be expected to assume the polish of the capital. Well, well--he must be a very clever and cultivated man as well as a most delightful one!" How could the marquise divulge what she knew of the abbé to this garrulous and purblind old woman? Toinon, who hung about the room and knew more than did her mistress could scarce contain herself. Had it been worth while to summon such a silly harridan? Her contingent of domestics, however, was a safeguard, during whose stay a taster could be dispensed with. Suffice it, she was here, and must be detained as long as possible, though she always detested Lorge. Toinon had made up her mind what steps she intended to take--the very steps which the abbé had guessed. She intended formally to impeach the abbé and Mademoiselle Brunelle; to unveil the past and the present for the shocked old lady's benefit, and solemnly adjure her on her return to the capital, to take steps for her daughter's safety, or make up her mind till her dying day to be persecuted by vengeful ghosts. In face of such an impeachment, and on the production of the cakes, the guilty abbé would quail. At any rate, his claws would be cut, so far as extreme measures were concerned.