nothing, I mean nothing. I mean that you can have entire confidence
in your poor servant.

--I thank you, Veronica, but I don't know what you mean.

--I explain myself badly doubtless, Monsieur le Cure. Ah! pardon me, I was
forgetting ... here, there is a letter which I have just found and which
has been slipped under the door at night.

He looked at the address. It was an elegant and bold hand, the hand of a
woman.

XXIII.

THE LETTER

"The beauty then, to end this war,
Offers but a single way which we can hardly guess."

R. IMBERT (_Nouvelles_).

A sweet perfume was exhaled from it.

He opened it with a trembling hand.

That strange intuition of the heart which is named presentiment, told him
that it came from Suzanne.

Pale with emotion he read:

"MONSIEUR L'ABBE,

"I do not wish the day to pass without coming to ask your pardon for my
father's conduct towards you, and assure you that he does not think a
single one of his wicked words.

"Do not keep, I pray, an evil memory of me, and believe that I should he
grieved if a single doubt were to remain in your mind as to the sympathy
and respect which you inspire in

"Suzanne Durand.

"P.S. I have much need of your counsels."

Marcel, full of a delicious trouble, read and re-read this letter. He did
not take careful note of his sensations, but he felt an ineffable joy
overflow his heart, and at the same time a vague anxiety.

His servant's voice recalled Him to himself.

--Doubtless it is a sick person who asks for religious aid, she said.

Was there a slight irony in that question?

The priest thought he saw it. He called out sharply:

--You are still there, Veronica? Who has called you? I don't want you any
longer.

--Pardon me, Monsieuur le Cure, she answered humbly and softly, I was
waiting.... I thought that perhaps you were going out _to visit this sick
person_ and that then I could be useful to you in some way.

--You cannot be useful to me in any way, Veronica, But truly you astonish
me. What have you then to say to me? Come, explain yourself at once.

--No, Monsieur le Cure, there is midnight striking. It is time to repose, I
wish you good-night, sir.

--Good-night, Veronica.

"What a strange woman," said Marcel to himself, "what can she want with me.
One would say that she had a secret to confide to me and that she does not
dare.... Could she have any suspicion? No, it is impossible. How could she
know what