eigneur!" said Madame Graslin to the bishop, after going the
rounds of the house, "I who expected to live in a cottage! Poor Monsieur
Graslin was extravagant indeed!"

"And you," said the bishop, adding after a pause, as he noticed the
shudder than ran through her frame at his first words, "you will be
extravagant in charity?"

She took the arm of her mother, who was leading Francis by the hand,
and went to the long terrace at the foot of which are the church and
the parsonage, and from which the houses of the village can be seen
in tiers. The rector carried off Monseigneur Dutheil to show him the
different sides of the landscape. Before long the two priests came round
to the farther end of the terrace, where they found Madame Graslin and
her mother motionless as statues. The old woman was wiping her eyes with
a handkerchief, and her daughter stood with both hands stretched beyond
the balustrade as though she were pointing to the church below.

"What is the matter, madame?" said the rector to Madame Sauviat.

"Nothing," replied Madame Graslin, turning round and advancing a few
steps to meet the priests; "I did not know that I should have the
cemetery under my eyes."

"You can put it elsewhere; the law gives you that right."

"The law!" she exclaimed with almost a cry.

Again the bishop looked fixedly at Veronique. Disturbed by the dark
glance with which the priest had penetrated the veil of flesh that
covered her soul, dragging thence a secret hidden in the grave of that
cemetery, she said to him suddenly:--

"Well, _yes_!"

The priest laid his hand over his eyes and was silent for a moment as if
stunned.

"Help my daughter," cried the old mother; "she is fainting."

"The air is so keen, it overcomes me," said Madame Graslin, as she fell
unconscious into the arms of the two priests, who carried her into one
of the lower rooms of the chateau.

When she recovered consciousness she saw the priests on their knees
praying for her.

"May the angel you visited you never leave you!" said the bishop,
blessing her. "Farewell, my daughter."

Overcome by those words Madame Graslin burst into tears.

"Tears will save her!" cried her mother.

"In this world and in the next," said the bishop, turning round as he
left the room.

The room to which they had carried Madame Graslin was on the first floor
above the ground-floor of the corner tower, from which the church and
cemetery and southern side of Montegnac could