ile an
unfeeling spirit, pervading all, would have filled a physiognomist
with disgust. These characteristics, fully visible at this moment, were
usually modified in public by a sort of commercial smile,--a bourgeois
smirk which mimicked good-humor; so that persons meeting with this old
maid might very well take her for a kindly woman. She owned the house
on shares with her brother. The brother, by-the-bye, was sleeping so
tranquilly in his own chamber that the orchestra of the Opera-house
could not have awakened him, wonderful as its diapason is said to be.

The old maid stretched her neck out of the window, twisted it, and
raised her cold, pale-blue little eyes, with their short lashes set in
lids that were always rather swollen, to the attic window, endeavoring
to see Pierrette. Perceiving the uselessness of that attempt, she
retreated into her room with a movement like that of a tortoise which
draws in its head after protruding it from its carapace. The blinds
were then closed, and the silence of the street was unbroken except by
peasants coming in from the country, or very early persons moving about.

When there is an old maid in a house, watch-dogs are unnecessary; not
the slightest event can occur that she does not see and comment upon and
pursue to its utmost consequences. The foregoing trifling circumstance
was therefore destined to give rise to grave suppositions, and to open
the way for one of those obscure dramas which take place in families,
and are none the less terrible because they are secret,--if, indeed, we
may apply the word "drama" to such domestic occurrences.

Pierrette did not go back to bed. To her, Brigaut's arrival was an
immense event. During the night--that Eden of the wretched--she escaped
the vexations and fault-findings she bore during the day. Like the hero
of a ballad, German or Russian, I forget which, her sleep seemed to her
the happy life; her waking hours a bad dream. She had just had her only
pleasurable waking in three years. The memories of her childhood had
sung their melodious ditties in her soul. The first couplet was heard
in a dream; the second made her spring out of bed; at the third, she
doubted her ears,--the sorrowful are all disciples of Saint Thomas; but
when the fourth was sung, standing in her night-gown with bare feet by
the window, she recognized Brigaut, the companion of her childhood. Ah,
yes! it was truly the well-known square jacket with the bobtails, the
pock