know how to put on when they wish a man to understand
that he has nothing to hope from them. There was an instant's silence;
the abbe was the first to break it.

"Madame," said he, "I ask your pardon for having used this means to speak
to you alone; but since, in spite of my rank of brother-in-law, you did
not seem inclined to grant me that favour if I had asked it, I thought it
would be better for me, to deprive you of the power to refuse it me."

"If you have hesitated to ask me so simple a thing, monsieur," replied
the marquise, "and if you have taken such precautions to compel me to
listen to you, it must, no doubt, be because you knew beforehand that the
words you had to say to me were such as I could not hear. Have the
goodness, therefore, to reflect, before you open this conversation, that
here as elsewhere I reserve the right--and I warn you of it--to interrupt
what you may say at the moment when it may cease to seem to me
befitting."

"As to that, madame," said the abbe, "I think I can answer for it that
whatever it may please me to say to you, you will hear to the end; but
indeed the matters are so simple that there is no need to make you uneasy
beforehand: I wished to ask you, madame, whether you have perceived a
change in the conduct of your husband towards you."

"Yes, monsieur," replied the marquise, "and no single day has passed in
which I have not thanked Heaven for this happiness."

"And you have been wrong, madame," returned the abbe, with one of those
smiles that were peculiar to himself; "Heaven has nothing to do with it.
Thank Heaven for having made you the most beautiful and charming of
women, and that will be enough thanksgiving without despoiling me of such
as belong to my share."

"I do not understand you, monsieur," said the marquise in an icy tone.

"Well, I will make myself comprehensible, my dear sister-in-law. I am
the worker of the miracle for which you are thanking Heaven; to me
therefore belongs your gratitude. Heaven is rich enough not to rob the
poor."

"You are right, monsieur: if it is really to you that I owe this return,
the cause of which I did not know, I will thank you in the first place;
and then afterwards I will thank Heaven for having inspired you with this
good thought."

"Yes," answered the abbe, "but Heaven, which has inspired me with a good
thought, may equally well inspire me with a bad one, if the good thought
does not bring me what I expect from it."