"You went to
the post-office."

"I went to the post-office, where I put in letters for Mademoiselle,
Madame, Monsieur le Baron, and one from Mademoiselle Aline for Monsieur
d'Artigues."

"Aline writing to her cousin! Did you know that?" said the old aunt,
turning quickly toward her niece.

"Certainly; they correspond regularly," replied Clemence with a smile
which seemed to say that she saw no harm in it.

The old maid shook her head and protruded her under lip, as much as to
say: We will attend to this another time.

Madame de Bergenheim, who was out of patience at this questioning,
began to speak in a quick tone which was a contrast to her aunt's solemn
slowness.

"Rousselet," said she, "when you took the newspapers out of the office,
did you notice whether the wrappers were intact, or whether they had
been opened?"

The good man half concealed his face in his cravat at this precise
questioning, and it was with embarrassment that he replied, after a
moment's hesitation:

"Certainly, Madame--as to the wrappers--I do not accuse the
postmaster--"

"If the journals were sealed when you received them, you are the only
one who could have opened them."

Rousselet straightened himself up to his full height, and, giving to his
nut-cracker face the most dignified look possible, he said in a solemn
tone:

"With due deference to you, Madame, Leonard Rousselet is well known.
Fifty-seven years old on Saint-Hubert's day, I am incapable of opening
newspapers. When they have been read at the chateau and they send
me with them to the cure, I do not say--perhaps on my way--it is a
recreation--and then the cure is Jean Bartou, son of Joseph Bartou, the
tilemaker. But to read the newspaper before my masters have done so!
Never! Leonard Rousselet is an old man incapable of such baseness.
Baptized when a child; fifty-seven years on Saint-Hubert's day."

"When you speak of your pastor, do so in a more becoming manner,"
interrupted Mademoiselle de Colrandeuil, although she herself in private
did not speak of the plebeian priest in very respectful terms. But if
Joseph Bartou's son was always the son of Joseph Bartou to her, she
meant that he should be Monsieur le Cure to the peasants.

Madame de Bergenheim had not been much affected by Pere Rousselet's
harangue, and shook her head impatiently, saying in an imperative tone:

"I am certain that the newspapers have been opened by you, or by some
person to whom you have given t