would think that you pitied this
Francesca."

"And why should I not, my child? She loved him before her marriage, and
she was driven to espouse a man whom she did not love."

"Love him or not makes but little difference. From the moment she
married him she was bound to be faithful. The story says that he was
old, and that seems to me an additional reason for respecting him more,
and for preventing other people from laughing at him. The old man did
right to kill them,--it was only what they deserved!"

She spoke with great violence. Her affection as a daughter, her honor as
a woman, influenced her words, and she judged and spoke with that cruel
candor that belongs to youth, and which judges life from the ideal
it has itself created, without comprehending in the least any of the
terrible exigencies which may arise.

Clarisse did not answer. She turned her face away, and was looking out
of the window. Jack, with his eyes on his book, thought of what he had
been reading. Here, amid these humble surroundings, this immortal legend
of guilty love had echoed "through the corridors of time," and after
four hundred years had awakened a response. Suddenly through the open
casement came a cry, "Hats! hats to sell!" Jack started to his feet and
ran into the street; but quick as he was, Clarisse had preceded him, and
as he went out, she came in, crushing a letter into her pocket.

The pedler was far down the street.

"Belisaire!" shouted Jack.

The man turned. "I was sure it was you," continued Jack, breathlessly.
"Do you come here often?"

"Yes, very often;" and then Belisaire added, after a moment, "How
happens it, Master Jack, that you are here, and have left that pretty
house?"

The boy hesitated, and the pedler seeing this, continued,--

"That was a famous ham, was it not? And that lovely lady, who had such a
gentle face, she was your mother, was she not?"

Jack was so happy at hearing her name mentioned that he would have
lingered there at the corner of the street for an hour, but Belisaire
said he was in haste, that he had a letter to deliver, and must go.

When Jack entered the house, Madame Rondic met him at the door. She was
very pale, and said, in a low voice, with trembling lips,--

"What did you want of that man?"

The child answered that he had known him at Etiolles, and that they had
been talking of his parents.

She uttered a sigh of relief. But that whole evening she was even
quieter than usual, an