to neither
party. With other independents like him, he repeated what he heard on
both sides and Vinet made the most of it. The lawyer's spiteful tongue
put venom into Madame Tiphaine's speeches, and by showing Rogron and
Sylvie the ridicule they had brought upon themselves he roused an
undying spirit of hatred in those bitter natures, which needed an object
for their petty passions.

A few days later Vinet brought his wife, a well-bred woman, neither
pretty nor plain, timid, very gentle, and deeply conscious of her false
position. Madame Vinet was fair-complexioned, faded by the cares of her
poor household, and very simply dressed. No woman could have pleased
Sylvie more. Madame Vinet endured her airs, and bent before them like
one accustomed to subjection. On the poor woman's rounded brow and
delicately timid cheek and in her slow and gentle glance, were the
traces of deep reflection, of those perceptive thoughts which women who
are accustomed to suffer bury in total silence.

The influence of the colonel (who now displayed to Sylvie the graces of
a courtier, in marked contradiction to his usual military brusqueness),
together with that of the astute Vinet, was soon to harm the Breton
child. Shut up in the house, no longer allowed to go out except in
company with her old cousin, Pierrette, that pretty little squirrel, was
at the mercy of the incessant cry, "Don't touch that, child, let that
alone!" She was perpetually being lectured on her carriage and behavior;
if she stooped or rounded her shoulders her cousin would call to her to
be as erect as herself (Sylvie was rigid as a soldier presenting arms
to his colonel); sometimes indeed the ill-natured old maid enforced the
order by slaps on the back to make the girl straighten up.

Thus the free and joyous little child of the Marais learned by degrees
to repress all liveliness and to make herself, as best she could, an
automaton.

V. HISTORY OF POOR COUSINS IN THE HOME OF RICH ONES

One evening, which marked the beginning of Pierrette's second phase of
life in her cousin's house, the child, whom the three guests had not
seen during the evening, came into the room to kiss her relatives and
say good-night to the company. Sylvie turned her cheek coldly to the
pretty creature, as if to avoid kissing her. The motion was so cruelly
significant that the tears sprang to Pierrette's eyes.

"Did you prick yourself, little girl?" said the atrocious Vinet.

"What i