her stitches another woman
understands her thoughts. In fact, though wearing a rose-colored dress,
with her hair carefully braided about her head, the bailiff's wife was
thinking of matters that were out of keeping with her pretty dress,
the glorious day, and the work her hands were engaged on. Her beautiful
brow, and the glance she turned sometimes on the ground at her feet,
sometimes on the foliage around, evidently seeing nothing, betrayed some
deep anxiety,--all the more unconsciously because she supposed herself
alone.

"Just as I was envying her! What can have saddened her?" whispered the
countess to the abbe.

"Madame," he replied in the same tone, "tell me why man is often seized
with vague and unaccountable presentiments of evil in the very midst of
some perfect happiness?"

"Abbe!" said Blondet, smiling, "you talk like a bishop. Napoleon said,
'Nothing is stolen, all is bought!'"

"Such a maxim, uttered by those imperial lips, takes the proportions of
society itself," replied the priest.

"Well, Olympe, my dear girl, what is the matter?" said the countess
going up to her former maid. "You seem sad and thoughtful; is it a
lover's quarrel?"

Madame Michaud's face, as she rose, changed completely.

"My dear," said Emile Blondet, in a fatherly tone, "I should like to
know what clouds that brow of yours, in this pavilion where you are
almost as well lodged as the Comte d'Artois at the Tuileries. It is
like a nest of nightingales in a grove! And what a husband we have!--the
bravest fellow of the young garde, and a handsome one, who loves us to
distraction! If I had known the advantages Montcornet has given you here
I should have left my diatribing business and made myself a bailiff."

"It is not the place for a man of your talent, monsieur," replied
Olympe, smiling at Blondet as an old acquaintance.

"But what troubles you, dear?" said the countess.

"Madame, I'm afraid--"

"Afraid! of what?" said the countess, eagerly; for the word reminded her
of Mouche and Fourchon.

"Afraid of the wolves, is that it?" said Emile, making Madame Michaud a
sign, which she did not understand.

"No, monsieur,--afraid of the peasants. I was born in Le Perche, where
of course there are some bad people, but I had no idea how wicked people
could be until I came here. I try not to meddle in Michaud's affairs,
but I do know that he distrusts the peasants so much that he goes armed,
even in broad daylight, when he enters th