r
had just perceived, somewhat late it is true, the signs of a dumb
persecution instituted against him for the last three months by
Mademoiselle Gamard, whose evil intentions would doubtless have been
fathomed much sooner by a more intelligent man. Old maids have a
special talent for accentuating the words and actions which their
dislikes suggest to them. They scratch like cats. They not only wound
but they take pleasure in wounding, and in making their victim see
that he is wounded. A man of the world would never have allowed
himself to be scratched twice; the good abbe, on the contrary, had
taken several blows from those sharp claws before he could be brought
to believe in any evil intention.

But when he did perceive it, he set to work, with the inquisitorial
sagacity which priests acquire by directing consciences and burrowing
into the nothings of the confessional, to establish, as though it were
a matter of religious controversy, the following proposition:
"Admitting that Mademoiselle Gamard did not remember it was Madame de
Listomere's evening, and that Marianne did think I was home, and did
really forget to make my fire, it is impossible, inasmuch as I myself
took down my candlestick this morning, that Mademoiselle Gamard,
seeing it in her salon, could have supposed I had gone to bed. Ergo,
Mademoiselle Gamard intended that I should stand out in the rain, and,
by carrying my candlestick upstairs, she meant to make me understand
it. What does it all mean?" he said aloud, roused by the gravity of
these circumstances, and rising as he spoke to take off his damp
clothes, get into his dressing-gown, and do up his head for the night.
Then he returned from the bed to the fireplace, gesticulating, and
launching forth in various tones the following sentences, all of which
ended in a high falsetto key, like notes of interjection:

"What the deuce have I done to her? Why is she angry with me? Marianne
did _not_ forget my fire! Mademoiselle told her not to light it! I must
be a child if I can't see, from the tone and manner she has been
taking to me, that I've done something to displease her. Nothing like
it ever happened to Chapeloud! I can't live in the midst of such
torments as--At my age--"

He went to bed hoping that the morrow might enlighten him on the
causes of the dislike which threatened to destroy forever the
happiness he had now enjoyed two years after wishing for it so long.
Alas! the secret reasons for the