"Mine! My dear Monsieur le Cure, I must have been a great fool, if I wrote any thing so absurd. Ah, bah! I remember. I was irritated with him at one time, I believe--he had a mania, and worried me. But--M. Deshoulieres! He is a hero, nothing less. There is to be a meeting to-morrow, to discuss some means of making known to him the gratitude of the town." At the Eveche it was the same. The Abbe laughed in his face. "He nettled me once, I acknowledge, but that was a trifle. I cannot tell you my feelings towards him now. Ask any of the clergy who worked with him in this last terrible three months. A mistake?--of course it was a mistake. All France has cause to be proud of M. Deshoulieres. My dear friend, imagine your coming on such an errand!" "Monsieur l'Abbe," said the cure, sharply, "I only wish you people of Charville would appreciate your heroes a little beforehand." Poor Therese! That day was, probably, the most desolate in her life. Whichever way she looked every thing seemed blank and homeless. Something had gone away out of her heart; at first a great swelling indignation took its place; but this could not last. There are sudden deaths as well as lingering: her love had met with such an end; but all deaths must have their suffering. Almost his first words had done it. What was it in them? how was he different from the Fabien of old days? She sat by her window looking out over the gabled roofs at the plain and the far horizon, where sad-coloured clouds were creeping quietly up-- with eager eyes that seemed to be searching an answer for the questions that were perplexing her. She was very miserable and sick at heart, but it was not so much with the loss of Fabien, as with the loss of love. It seemed to her as if, in spite of the slighting and the coldness, she ought to love him still--and she did not. It was the identical Fabien after all, though she tried to think otherwise. In the old contests with his uncle, the old impatience of control, weak resistance, attempts at self-assertion, there had been the same character, but she had set round it a little glow of her own, and covered up its imperfections until she had forgotten them. She had counted for love what was no more than a mixture of vanity and self-will. Old Moreau might have left Fabien alone in this matter, and he would have ended by marrying a _dot_. Or, again, a little hardship and real work would have quickly brought him back from South America. But the old man yearned after his prodigal. He smoothed his way for him, all the time writing fierce unforgiving letters demanding submission and return. Fabien, who soon found out where his good things came from, used to enjoy them comfortably, and mock at the threats which they contradicted. When at last they stopped he was a little uneasy, and wrote two letters; but he was receiving a good salary in an office, and there was no great difficulty in being supplied with money. M. Moreau's feelings were