e news spread abroad that the girl was
accursed and sold to the Evil One, and she was avoided by everybody. She
felt herself doomed. At length she reached her grandmother's house,
but she could not work, she could scarcely stand. The once radiant
Franconnette could neither play nor sing; she could only weep.

Thus ended two cantos of the poem. The third opens with a lovely picture
of a cottage by a leafy brookside in the hamlet of Estanquet. The
spring brought out the singing-birds to pair and build their nests. They
listened, but could no longer hear the music which, in former years, had
been almost sweeter than their own. The nightingales, more curious
than the rest, flew into the maid's garden; they saw her straw hat on
a bench, a rake and watering-pot among the neglected jonquils, and the
rose branches running riot. Peering yet further and peeping into the
cottage door, the curious birds discovered an old woman asleep in her
arm-chair, and a pale, quiet girl beside her, dropping tears upon her
lily hands. "Yes, yes, it is. Franconnette," says the poet. "You
will have guessed that already. A poor girl, weeping in solitude, the
daughter of a Huguenot, banned by the Church and sold to the devil!
Could anything be more frightful?"

Nevertheless her grandmother said to her, "My child, it is not true; the
sorcerer's charge is false. He of good cheer, you are more lovely than
ever." One gleam of hope had come to Franconnette; she hears that Pascal
has defended her everywhere, and boldly declared her to be the victim
of a brutal plot. She now realised how great was his goodness, and her
proud spirit was softened even to tears. The grandmother put in a good
word for Marcel, but the girl turned aside. Then the old woman said,
"To-morrow is Easter Day; go to Mass, pray as you never prayed before,
and take the blessed bread, proving that you are numbered with His
children for ever."

The girl consented, and went to the Church of Saint Peter on Easter
morning. She knelt, with her chaplet of beads, among the rest, imploring
Heaven's mercy. But she knelt alone in the midst of a wide circle. All
the communicants avoided her. The churchwarden, Marcel's uncle, in
his long-tailed coat, with a pompous step, passed her entirely by, and
refused her the heavenly meal. Pascal was there and came to her help.
He went forward to the churchwarden and took from the silver plate the
crown piece{6} of the holy element covered with flowers, and