Knots of people stood about the streets, all talking of the strange event. Charville is rich in beauty, in picturesqueness, in its magnificent Cathedral, but its events are few and orderly. People do get killed every now and then, it is true: only a few months before, young Jean Gouye had fallen from a scaffolding, and never spoken again. But then everybody knew Jean Gouye, and all about him: there was no mystery or room for speculation in his fate, poor fellow! This last was a very different matter. Who were the strangers? Where did they come from? Where were they going? What brought them to Charville? What made him fall? Was he dead? Was mademoiselle in much grief? Each person asked the other without much hope of finding out: it was something to get hold of Nannon, and hear the little she had to tell. There was no hurry of business to interfere with their curiosity. Charville took life leisurely: if a house had to be built the masons talked, laughed, joked with each other between laying on their stones; the shoemakers gossiped with their neighbours; women brought their work to the door, played with the children, scolded or chattered. It was an easy, quiet, lounging sort of existence, without much distraction from the outer world,--a magnified village life. Such an event as had occurred that morning came upon them like a new sensation. Nannon had never been made so much of. Veuve Angelin followed sulkily. She would not accompany the triumphal progress to the door of the Cygne, but turned down a narrow, ill-paved street, which branched off by the Eveche, and ended in a small, modern square. M. Deshoulieres' house stood in the midst of it, and she entered hastily, with some fears lest he should be there, and angry at the delay of his breakfast. He was an easy-going master, just the one that Veuve Angelin liked, too much absorbed with his own thoughts and interests to interfere much with her sovereignty; but every now and then he awoke sufficiently to make her aware that she could not presume absolutely upon his absent ways. Even when she ruled most despotically she was just a little afraid of him. There was always a possibility that he might assert the prerogative of having his own way. Now she was conscious that he would have a reason for indignation, if he returned, hungry and weary, from his morning's work, to find the house empty, no food prepared. "It is all the fault of that gossiping old Nannon!" she said crossly, as she stopped, hot and out of breath, to listen at the foot of the stairs for her master's steps overhead. She heard nothing; but it was with the air of a martyr that she mounted, prepared, if there was need, to expatiate upon her own sufferings, and the inconveniences caused by the absence of Lisette, the _fille_ who generally fetched the water. She need not have been afraid. It was quite two hours afterwards--the things were set out in the