hat he hardly
realized that they were not indeed from his grandchild. In a moment's
glance he saw how it was. A little bird had flown in at one of the empty
window, and was fluttering over the heads of the congregation, and a
small, plump, white arm and hand was stretched out and pointing--a rosy,
fair, smiling face upturned; a little gray figure had scrambled up
on the knee of one of the still, black-hooded women; and the shout of
irrepressible delight was breaking on the decorum of the congregation,
in spite of hushes, in spite of the uplifted rod of a scarlet serjeant
on his way down the aisle to quell the disturbance; nay, as the bird
came nearer, the exulting voice, proud of the achievement of a new word,
shouted '_Moineau, moineau_.' Angered by defiance to authority, down
came the rod, not indeed with great force, but with enough to make the
arms clasp round the mother's neck, the face hide itself on in, a loud,
terrified wail ring through the church, and tempestuous sobbing follow
it up. Then uprose the black-hooded figure, the child tightly clasped,
and her mantle drawn round it, while the other hand motioned the
official aside, and down the aisle, even to the door, she swept with
the lofty carriage, high-drawn neck, and swelling bosom of an offended
princess.

Maitre Gardon heard little more of the discourse, indeed he would have
followed at once had he not feared to increase the sensation and the
scandal. He came home to find Rayonette's tears long ago dried, but her
mother furious. She would leave Montauban that minute, she would never
set foot in a heretic conventicle again, to have her fatherless child,
daughter of all the Ribaumonts, struck by base _canaille_. Even her
uncle could not have done worse; he at least would have respected her
blood.

Maitre Gardon did not know that his charge could be in such a passion,
as, her eyes flashing through tears, she insisted on being taken away at
once. No, she would hear nothing. She seemed to fell resentment due to
the honour of all the Ribaumonts, and he was obliged peremptorily
to refuse to quit Montauban till his business at the Synod should
be completed, and then to leave her in a flood of angry tears and
reproaches for exposing her child to such usage, and approving it.

Poor little thing, he found her meek and penitent for her unjust anger
towards himself. Whatever he desired she would do, she would stay or go
with him anywhere except to a sermon at the Mo