er Louise, my wife.'

"'Certainly, I remember her.'

"'Well, she left me a message for you.'

"'What was it?'

"'A--a--well, it was what you might call a confession.'

"'Ha--and what was it about?'

"'It was--it was--I'd rather, all the same, tell you nothing
about it--but I must--I must. Well, it's this--it wasn't
consumption she died of at all. It was grief--well, that's the long
and short of it. As soon as she came to live here after we were married,
she grew thin; she changed so that you wouldn't know her, M'sieu le
Baron. She was just as I was before I married her, but it was just the
opposite, just the opposite.

"'I sent for the doctor. He said it was her liver that was affected--he
said it was what he called a "hepatic" complaint--I don't know these
big words, M'sieu le Baron. Then I bought medicine for her, heaps on
heaps of bottles that cost about three hundred francs. But she'd take
none of them; she wouldn't have them; she said: "It's no use, my poor
Jean; it wouldn't do me any good." I saw well that she had some hidden
trouble; and then I found her one time crying, and I didn't know what to
do, no, I didn't know what to do. I bought her caps, and dresses, and
hair oil, and earrings. Nothing did her any good. And I saw that she was
going to die. And so one night at the end of November, one snowy night,
after she had been in bed the whole day, she told me to send for the
cure. So I went for him. As soon as he came--'

"'Jean,' she said, 'I am going to make a confession to you. I owe it to
you, Jean. I have never been false to you, never! never, before or after
you married me. M'sieu le Cure is there, and can tell you so; he knows my
soul. Well, listen, Jean. If I am dying, it is because I was not able to
console myself for leaving the chateau, because I was too fond of the
young Baron Monsieur Rene, too fond of him, mind you, Jean, there was no
harm in it! This is the thing that's killing me. When I could see him no
more I felt that I should die. If I could only have seen him, I might
have lived, only seen him, nothing more. I wish you'd tell him some day,
by and by, when I am no longer here. You will tell him, swear you, will,
Jean--swear it--in the presence of M'sieu le Cure! It will console me to
know that he will know it one day, that this was the cause of my death!
Swear it!'

"'Well, I gave her my promise, M'sieu It Baron, and on the faith of an
honest man I have kept my word.'

"And then h