The marquis' peasants were by no means under the influence of the
Empire, as I knew from observing the lad whom he had sought among the
drowned in the mortuary chapel of the Hotel Dieu, and who was afterwards
found in a remote wine shop seeing sights. The goose girl dared not
speak to me unless I required it of her, and the unusual notice was an
honor she would have avoided.

"What do you do here?" I inquired.

Her little heart palpitated in the answer--"Oh, guard the geese."

"Do they give you trouble?"

"Not much, except that wicked gander." She pointed out with her
knitting-needle a sleek white fellow, who flirted his tail and turned an
eye, quavering as if he said--"La, la, la!"

"What does he do?"

"He would be at the vines and the corn, monsieur."

"Bad gander!"

"I switch him," she informed me, like a magistrate.

"But that would only make him run."

"Also I have a string in my pocket, and I tie him by the leg to a
tree."

"Serves him right. Is the Marquis du Plessy at the chateau?"

Her face grew shaded, as a cloud chases sunlight before it across a
meadow. "Do you mean the new marquis, the old marquis' cousin, monsieur?
He went away directly after the burial."

"What burial?"'

"The old marquis' burial. That was before St. John's day."

"Be careful what you say, my child!"

"Didn't you know he was dead, _monsieur?_"

"I have been on a journey. Was his death sudden?"

"He was killed in a duel in Paris."

I sat down on the grass with my head in my hands. Bellenger had told the
truth.

One scant month the Marquis du Plessy fostered me like a son. To this
hour my slow heart aches for the companionship of the lightest, most
delicate spirit I ever encountered in man.

Once I lifted my head and insisted,

"It can't be true!"

"Monsieur," the goose girl asserted solemnly, "it is true. The blessed
St. Alpin, my patron, forget me if I tell you a lie."

Around the shadowed spot where I sat I heard trees whispering on the
hills, and a cart rumbling along the hardened dust of the road.

"Monsieur," spoke the goose girl out of her good heart, "if you want to
go to his chapel I will show you the path."

She tied a string around the leg of the wicked gander and attached him
to the tree, shaking a wand at him in warning. He nipped her sleeve, and
hissed, and hopped, his wives remonstrating softly; but his guardian
left him bound and carried her knitting down a valley to a stream,
across the