d a small blue surtout coat which seemed
glued to his back and shoulders by some newly-invented process.
The ribbon of the Legion of honor was in his buttonhole. He wore a
well-fitting pair of kid gloves of the Florentine bronze color, and
carried his cane and hat in the left hand with a gesture and air that
was worthy of the Grand Monarch, and enabled him to show, as the
sacred precincts required, his bare head with the light falling on his
carefully arranged hair. He stationed himself before the service began
in the church porch, from whence he could examine the church, and the
Christians--more particularly the female Christians--who dipped their
fingers in the holy water.

An inward voice cried to Modeste as she entered, "It is he!" That
surtout, and indeed the whole bearing of the young man were essentially
Parisian; the ribbon, the gloves, the cane, the very perfume of his hair
were not of Havre. So when La Briere turned about to examine the
tall and imposing Madame Latournelle, the notary, and the bundled-up
(expression sacred to women) figure of Modeste, the poor child, though
she had carefully tutored herself for the event, received a violent blow
on her heart when her eyes rested on this poetic figure, illuminated by
the full light of day as it streamed through the open door. She could
not be mistaken; a small white rose nearly hid the ribbon of the Legion.
Would he recognize his unknown mistress muffled in an old bonnet with
a double veil? Modeste was so in fear of love's clairvoyance that she
began to stoop in her walk like an old woman.

"Wife," said little Latournelle as they took their seats, "that
gentleman does not belong to Havre."

"So many strangers come here," answered his wife.

"But," said the notary, "strangers never come to look at a church like
ours, which is less than two centuries old."

Ernest remained in the porch throughout the service without seeing any
woman who realized his hopes. Modeste, on her part, could not control
the trembling of her limbs until Mass was nearly over. She was in the
grasp of a joy that none but she herself could depict. At last she heard
the foot-fall of a gentleman on the pavement of the aisle. The service
over, La Briere was making a circuit of the church, where no one now
remained but the punctiliously pious, whom he proceeded to subject to
a shrewd and keen analysis. Ernest noticed that a prayer-book shook
violently in the hands of a veiled woman as he pas