the bolts.

"Why did you let me ring three times in such weather?" said the vicar.

"But, monsieur, don't you see the door was locked? We have all been
in bed ever so long; it struck a quarter to eleven some time ago.
Mademoiselle must have thought you were in."

"You saw me go out, yourself. Besides, Mademoiselle knows very well I
always go to Madame de Listomere's on Wednesday evening."

"I only did as Mademoiselle told me, monsieur."

These words struck the vicar a blow, which he felt the more because his
late revery had made him completely happy. He said nothing and followed
Marianne towards the kitchen to get his candlestick, which he supposed
had been left there as usual. But instead of entering the kitchen
Marianne went on to his own apartments, and there the vicar beheld his
candlestick on a table close to the door of the red salon, in a sort of
antechamber formed by the landing of the staircase, which the late canon
had inclosed with a glass partition. Mute with amazement, he entered his
bedroom hastily, found no fire, and called to Marianne, who had not had
time to get downstairs.

"You have not lighted the fire!" he said.

"Beg pardon, Monsieur l'abbe, I did," she said; "it must have gone out."

Birotteau looked again at the hearth, and felt convinced that the fire
had been out since morning.

"I must dry my feet," he said. "Make the fire."

Marianne obeyed with the haste of a person who wants to get back to her
night's rest. While looking about him for his slippers, which were not
in the middle of his bedside carpet as usual, the abbe took mental notes
of the state of Marianne's dress, which convinced him that she had not
got out of bed to open the door as she said she had. He then recollected
that for the last two weeks he had been deprived of various little
attentions which for eighteen months had made life sweet to him. Now,
as the nature of narrow minds induces them to study trifles, Birotteau
plunged suddenly into deep meditation on these four circumstances,
imperceptible in their meaning to others, but to him indicative of four
catastrophes. The total loss of his happiness was evidently foreshadowed
in the neglect to place his slippers, in Marianne's falsehood about
the fire, in the unusual removal of his candlestick to the table of the
antechamber, and in the evident intention to keep him waiting in the
rain.

When the fire was burning on the hearth, and the lamp was lighted, and
Marianne