his
time he was not mistaken; his days of poverty were over, after seven
wretched years, when even his daily bread was sometimes lacking. The
day when Gouraud told him in the little square that the Rogrons had
finally quarrelled with the bourgeois aristocracy of the Upper town,
he nudged the colonel in the ribs significantly, and said, with a
knowing look:--

"One woman or another--handsome or ugly--_you_ don't care; marry
Mademoiselle Rogron and we can organize something at once."

"I have been thinking of it," replied Gouraud, "but the fact is they
have sent for the daughter of Colonel Lorrain, and she's their next of
kin."

"You can get them to make a will in your favor. Ha! you would get a
very comfortable house."

"As for the little girl--well, well, let's see her," said the colonel,
with a leering and thoroughly wicked look, which proved to a man of
Vinet's quality how little respect the old trooper could feel for any
girl.

IV

PIERRETTE

After her grandfather and grandmother entered the sort of hospital in
which they sadly expected to end their days, Pierrette, being young
and proud, suffered so terribly at living there on charity that she
was thankful when she heard she had rich relations. When Brigaut, the
son of her mother's friend the major, and the companion of her
childhood, who was learning his trade as a cabinet-maker at Nantes,
heard of her departure he offered her the money to pay her way to
Paris in the diligence,--sixty francs, the total of his _pour-boires_
as an apprentice, slowly amassed, and accepted by Pierrette with the
sublime indifference of true affection, showing that in a like case
she herself would be affronted by thanks.

Brigaut was in the habit of going every Sunday to Saint-Jacques to
play with Pierrette and try to console her. The vigorous young workman
knew the dear delight of bestowing a complete and devoted protection
on an object involuntarily chosen by his heart. More than once he and
Pierrette, sitting on Sundays in a corner of the garden, had
embroidered the veil of the future with their youthful projects; the
apprentice, armed with his plane, scoured the world to make their
fortune, while Pierrette waited.

In October, 1824, when the child had completed her eleventh year, she
was entrusted by the two old people and by Brigaut, all three
sorrowfully sad, to the conductor of the diligence from Nantes