te," said the rector, "he can have
none but good intentions."

"Ah! monsieur, my child will die!" cried Madame Sauviat, seeing the
effect of the rector's words on her daughter's face. "How can her heart
survive such emotions? Monsieur Grossetete has always hitherto prevented
that man from seeing Veronique."

Madame Graslin's face was on fire.

"Do you hate him so much?" said the Abbe Bonnet.

"She left Limoges to escape the sight of him, and to escape letting
the whole town into her secrets," said Madame Sauviat, terrified at the
change she saw on Madame Graslin's features.

"Do you not see that he will poison my few remaining hours? When I ought
to be thinking of heaven he will nail me to earth," cried Veronique.

The rector took her arm and constrained her to walk aside with him. When
they were alone he stopped and gave her one of those angelic looks with
which he was able to calm the violent convulsions of the soul.

"If it is really so," he said, "as your confessor, I order you to
receive him, to be kind and affectionate to him, to quit that garment of
wrath, and forgive him as God will forgive you. Can there still be the
remains of passion of a soul I believed to be purified. Burn this last
incense on the altar of your penitence, or else your repentance is a
lie."

"There was still that effort to make--and it is made," she answered,
wiping her eyes. "The devil lurked in that last fold of my heart, and
God, no doubt, put into Monsieur de Grandville's mind the thought that
brings him here. Ah! how many times must God strike me?" she cried.

She stopped, as if to say a mental prayer; then she returned to Madame
Sauviat and said in a low voice:

"My dear mother, be kind and gentle to Monsieur de Grandville."

The old woman clasped her hands with a feverish shudder.

"There is no longer any hope," she said, seizing the rector's hand.

The carriage, announced by the postilion's whip, was now coming up the
last slope; the gates were opened, it entered the courtyard, and the
travellers came at once to the terrace. They were the illustrious
Archbishop Dutheil, who was on his way to consecrate Monseigneur Gabriel
de Rastignac, the _procureur-general_, Monsieur de Grandville, Monsieur
Grossetete, Monsieur Roubaud, and one of the most celebrated physicians
in Paris, Horace Bianchon.

"You are very welcome," said Veronique, advancing toward them,--"you
particularly," she added, offering her hand to Monsieur de G