was the matter. At last they confessed
that they believed something to have happened to me, in punishment for
the wrong done to the Sisters at the hospital. 'Make haste, my son, to
amend this error,' my mother cried, 'lest a worse thing befall us!' And
then I discovered that among the women, and among many of the poor
people, it had come to be believed that the darkness was a curse upon us
for what we had done in respect to the hospital. This roused me to
indignation. 'If they think I am to be driven from my duty by their
magic,' I cried; 'it is no better than witchcraft!' not that I believed
for a moment that it was they who had done it. My wife wept, and my
mother became angry with me; but when a thing is duty, it is neither
wife nor mother who will move me out of my way.

It was a miserable day. There was not light enough to see
anything--scarcely to see each other's faces; and to add to our alarm,
some travellers arriving by the diligence (we are still three leagues
from a railway, while that miserable little place, La Rochette, being
the _chef-lieu,_ has a terminus) informed me that the darkness only
existed in Semur and the neighbourhood, and that within a distance of
three miles the sun was shining. The sun was shining! was it possible?
it seemed so long since we had seen the sunshine; but this made our
calamity more mysterious and more terrible. The people began to gather
into little knots in the streets to talk of the strange thing that was
happening In the course of the day M. Barbou came to ask whether I did
not think it would be well to appease the popular feeling by conceding
what they wished to the Sisters of the hospital. I would not hear of it.
'Shall we own that we are in the wrong? I do not think we are in the
wrong,' I said, and I would not yield. 'Do you think the good Sisters
have it in their power to darken the sky with their incantations?' M.
l'Adjoint shook his head. He went away with a troubled countenance; but
then he was not like myself, a man of natural firmness. All the efforts
that were employed to influence him were also employed with me; but to
yield to the women was not in my thoughts.

We are now approaching, however, the first important incident in this
narrative. The darkness increased as the afternoon came on; and it
became a kind of thick twilight, no lighter than many a night. It was
between five and six o'clock, just the time when our streets are the
most crowded, when, sitting a