Mother Rosalie was gifted with a beautiful soprano voice, which proved to be a source of divine refreshment to Abbé Mignot, who was fond of playing the organ. There can be no music without work. Work at their music threw the Mother and the _curé_ together. And as one study leads to another, the visits of Mother Rosalie to Abbé Mignot came to be fairly frequent. Presently there was gossip, and after a time what had at first been a playful buzzing became rumblings of scandal. Is it credible? The first threat of a storm came from the three Sisters at the hospital. These old maids, who had until that moment been totally insignificant, felt surging in them, of a sudden, an irrepressible wave of spleen, intensified and again intensified by the acid of celibacy. Although touched in a sensitive spot by the discontinuance of luncheon at the rectory on Sundays, sole amusement of their lives, they had made no sign. But the moment their one-time host laid himself open to criticism, the hurricane burst, and the flood of heinous words came beating against the very walls of the sacred edifice. Nothing can be hidden in a village. Life is carried on in broad daylight. The ditches, the stones, the bushes have eyes. Everyone knew very well that Abbé Mignot and "the pretty Mother," as she was currently called, had never met anywhere but in the church, the door of which was open to all. The pealing of the organ and the pure voice rising to the rafters ought, it would seem, to have counteracted the poison of malevolent insinuations. "Certainly," said the peasants, "they are doing no harm, _as long as they keep on singing_!" Occasionally, when the organ was silent, Mother Rosalie knelt in the confessional. Busybodies, stationed behind pillars, considered that she remained there too long, and that she confessed oftener than necessary. This was all that any one could find to say against them. I did my best to defend them, when occasion arose, but the only effect of my pleading, I fear, was to give more importance to the spiteful words.