We reached Voreppe to the sound of the tocsin; what remained of the cloven storm lay before us. In the distant landscape, we saw a blazing village and the moon rounding out the upper portion of his disc above the clouds, like the pale, bald forehead of St. Bruno, the founder of the order of silence. M. Ballanche, all dripping with rain, said with his immovable placidity: "I am like a fish in the water." I have just seen Voreppe again, in this year 1838: the storm was there no longer; but two witnesses of it still remain, Madame de Chateaubriand and M. Ballanche. I mention this because I have too often, in these Memoirs, had to call attention to the dead. On returning to Lyons we left our companion there, and went to Villeneuve. I have told you about this little town, my walks and my regrets on the banks of the Yonne with M. Joubert. Three old maids used to live there, Mesdemoiselles Piat; they reminded me of my grandmother's three friends at Plancoët, saving the difference in social position. The virgins of Villeneuve died one after the other, and I thought of them when I saw a grass-grown flight of steps, running up outside their empty house. What used these village damsels to talk about in their time! They spoke of a dog, and of a muff which their father had once bought them at Sens Fair. To me this was as charming as the council of the same town at which St. Bernard had Abélard, my fellow-Breton, condemned. The maids of the muff were Heloïses perhaps; perhaps they loved, and their letters, brought to light, will one day entrance posterity. Who knows? Perhaps they wrote to their "lord, also their father, also their brother, also their spouse: _domino suo, imo patri_," etc., that they felt honoured by the name of friend, by the name of "mistress" or of "courtesan: _concubinæ vel scorti._" "In the midst of his learning," says a grave doctor, "I find that Abélard played an admirably foolish prank when he suborned with love his pupil Héloïse." [Sidenote: Illness of Lucile.]