a little
Breton cap like the one Pierrette had worn on her first arrival in
Provins; it made the darling seem more like her childlike self; in it
she was delightful to look upon, her sweet face circled with a halo of
cambric and fluted lace. Her skin, white with the whiteness of
unglazed porcelain, her forehead, where suffering had printed the
semblance of deep thought, the purity of the lines refined by illness,
the slowness of the glances, and the occasional fixity of the eyes,
made Pierrette an almost perfect embodiment of melancholy. She was
served by all with a sort of fanaticism; she was felt to be so gentle,
so tender, so loving. Madame Martener sent her piano to her sister
Madame Auffray, thinking to amuse Pierrette who was passionately fond
of music. It was a poem to watch her listening to a theme of Weber, or
Beethoven, or Herold,--her eyes raised, her lips silent, regretting no
doubt the life escaping her. The cure Peroux and Monsieur Habert, her
two religious comforters, admired her saintly resignation. Surely the
seraphic perfection of young girls and young men marked with the
hectic of death, is a wonderful fact worthy of the attention alike of
philosophers and of heedless minds. He who has ever seen one of these
sublime departures from this life can never remain, or become, an
unbeliever. Such beings exhale, as it were, a celestial fragrance;
their glances speak of God; the voices are eloquent in the simplest
words; often they ring like some seraphic instrument revealing the
secrets of the future. When Monsieur Martener praised her for having
faithfully followed a harsh prescription the little angel replied, and
with what a glance!--

"I want to live, dear Monsieur Martener; but less for myself than for
my grandmother, for my Brigaut, for all of you who will grieve at my
death."

The first time she went into the garden on a beautiful sunny day in
November attended by all the household, Madame Auffray asked her if
she was tired.

"No, now that I have no sufferings but those God sends I can bear
all," she said. "The joy of being loved gives me strength to suffer."

That was the only time (and then vaguely) that she ever alluded to her
horrible martyrdom at the Rogrons, whom she never mentioned, and of
whom no one reminded her, knowing well how painful the memory must be.

"Dear Madame Auffray," she said one day at noon on the terrace, as she
gazed at the valley, warmed by a glorious sun and colored wi