, and there are pillars in them."

"Monsieur is writing a great archaeological work to explain these
strange constructions," interposed Monsieur Martener, seeing that the
deputy-judge was about to mount his hobby.

Rogron came home much comforted to know that his house was in
the valley. The crypts of Provins kept him occupied for a week in
explorations, and gave a topic of conversation to the unhappy celibates
for many evenings.

In the course of these ramblings Rogron picked up various bits of
information about Provins, its inhabitants, their marriages, together
with stale political news; all of which he narrated to his sister.
Scores of times in his walks he would stop and say,--often to the same
person on the same day,--"Well, what's the news?" When he reached home
he would fling himself on the sofa like a man exhausted with labor,
whereas he was only worn out with the burden of his own dulness. Dinner
came at last, after he had gone twenty times to the kitchen and back,
compared the clocks, and opened and shut all the doors of the house.
So long as the brother and sister could spend their evenings in paying
visits they managed to get along till bedtime; but after they were
compelled to stay at home those evenings became like a parching desert.
Sometimes persons passing through the quiet little square would hear
unearthly noises as though the brother were throttling the sister; a
moment's listening would show that they were only yawning. These two
human mechanisms, having nothing to grind between their rusty wheels,
were creaking and grating at each other. The brother talked of marrying,
but only in despair. He felt old and weary; the thought of a woman
frightened him. Sylvie, who began to see the necessity of having a third
person in the home, suddenly remembered the little cousin, about whom no
one in Provins had yet inquired, the friends of Madame Lorrain probably
supposing that mother and child were both dead.

Sylvie Rogron never lost anything; she was too thoroughly an old maid
even to mislay the smallest article; but she pretended to have suddenly
found the Lorrains' letter, so as to mention Pierrette naturally to her
brother, who was greatly pleased at the possibility of having a little
girl in the house. Sylvie replied to Madame Lorrain's letter half
affectionately, half commercially, as one may say, explaining the delay
by their change of abode and the settlement of their affairs. She seemed
desirous o