aught you!" cried the old woman, rushing to the window, from
which she saw Jacques running at full speed. "Give me that letter."

"No, cousin," said Pierrette, who, by one of those strong inspirations
of youth sustained by her own soul, rose to a grandeur of resistance
such as we admire in the history of certain peoples reduced to despair.

"Ha! you will not?" cried Sylvie, advancing upon the girl with a face
full of hatred and fury.

Pierrette fell back to get time to put her letter in her hand, which she
clenched with unnatural force. Seeing this manoeuvre Sylvie grasped the
delicate white hand of the girl in her lobster claws and tried to open
it. It was a frightful struggle, an infamous struggle; it was more than
a physical struggle; it assailed the mind, the sole treasure of the
human being, the thought, which God has placed beyond all earthly power
and guards as the secret way between the sufferer and Himself. The two
women, one dying, the other in the vigor of health, looked at each other
fixedly. Pierrette's eyes darted on her executioner the look the famous
Templar on the rack cast upon Philippe le Bel, who could not bear it and
fled thunderstricken. Sylvie, a woman and a jealous woman, answered that
magnetic look with malignant flashes. A dreadful silence reigned. The
clenched hand of the Breton girl resisted her cousin's efforts like a
block of steel. Sylvie twisted Pierrette's arm, she tried to force the
fingers open; unable to do so she stuck her nails into the flesh.
At last, in her madness, she set her teeth into the wrist, trying to
conquer the girl by pain. Pierrette defied her still, with that same
terrible glance of innocence. The anger of the old maid grew to such a
pitch that it became blind fury. She seized Pierrette's arm and struck
the closed fist upon the window-sill, and then upon the marble of the
mantelpiece, as we crack a nut to get the kernel.

"Help! help!" cried Pierrette, "they are murdering me!"

"Ha! you may well scream, when I catch you with a lover in the dead of
night."

And she beat the hand pitilessly.

"Help! help!" cried Pierrette, the blood flowing.

At that instant, loud knocks were heard at the front door. Exhausted,
the two women paused a moment.

Rogron, awakened and uneasy, not knowing what was happening, had got up,
gone to his sister's room, and not finding her was frightened. Hearing
the knocks he went down, unfastened the front door, and was nearly
knocked ov