in
silent ecstasy, listened to a sonata by Mozart performed for his benefit
by the young woman in the adjoining drawing-room, a stillness as of
death continued to pervade the apartment where Colonel de Vineuil and
Madame Delaherche spent their days, the blinds tight drawn, the lamp
continually burning, like a votive candle illuminating a tomb. December
had come and wrapped the city in a winding-sheet of snow; the cruel news
seemed all the bitterer for the piercing cold. After General Ducrot's
repulse at Champigny, after the loss of Orleans, there was left but one
dark, sullen hope: that the soil of France might avenge their defeat,
exterminate and swallow up the victors. Let the snow fall thicker and
thicker still, let the earth's crust crack and open under the biting
frost, that in it the entire German nation might find a grave! And there
came another sorrow to wring poor Madame Delaherche's heart. One night
when her son was from home, having been suddenly called away to Belgium
on business, chancing to pass Gilberte's door she heard within a low
murmur of voices and smothered laughter. Disgusted and sick at heart she
returned to her own room, where her horror of the abominable thing she
suspected the existence of would not let her sleep: it could have been
none other but the Prussian whose voice she heard; she had thought she
had noticed glances of intelligence passing; she was prostrated by this
supreme disgrace. Ah, that woman, that abandoned woman, whom her son had
insisted on bringing to the house despite her commands and prayers, whom
she had forgiven, by her silence, after Captain Beaudoin's death! And
now the thing was repeated, and this time the infamy was even worse.
What was she to do? Such an enormity must not go unpunished beneath
her roof. Her mind was torn by the conflict that raged there, in her
uncertainty as to the course she should pursue. The colonel, desiring to
know nothing of what occurred outside his room, always checked her with
a gesture when he thought she was about to give him any piece of news,
and she had said nothing to him of the matter that had caused her such
suffering; but on those days when she came to him with tears standing in
her eyes and sat for hours in mournful silence, he would look at her and
say to himself that France had sustained yet another defeat.

This was the condition of affairs in the house in the Rue Maqua
when Henriette dropped in there one morning to endeavor to s