found out that the first
meeting between the Norman and Virginie was no accidental, isolated
circumstance. Pierre was torturing him with his accounts of daily
rendezvous: if but for a moment, they were seeing each other every day,
sometimes twice a day. And Virginie could speak to this man, though to
himself she was coy and reserved as hardly to utter a sentence. Pierre
caught these broken words while his cousin's complexion grew more and
more livid, and then purple, as if some great effect were produced on his
circulation by the news he had just heard. Pierre was so startled by his
cousin's wandering, senseless eyes, and otherwise disordered looks, that
he rushed into a neighbouring cabaret for a glass of absinthe, which he
paid for, as he recollected afterwards, with a portion of Virginie's five
francs. By-and-by Morin recovered his natural appearance; but he was
gloomy and silent; and all that Pierre could get out of him was, that the
Norman farmer should not sleep another night at the Hotel Duguesclin,
giving him such opportunities of passing and repassing by the
conciergerie door. He was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to repay
Pierre the half franc he had spent on the absinthe, which Pierre
perceived, and seems to have noted down in the ledger of his mind as on
Virginie's balance of favour.

"Altogether, he was much disappointed at his cousin's mode of receiving
intelligence, which the lad thought worth another five-franc piece at
least; or, if not paid for in money, to be paid for in open-mouthed
confidence and expression of feeling, that he was, for a time, so far a
partisan of Virginie's--unconscious Virginie--against his cousin, as to
feel regret when the Norman returned no more to his night's lodging, and
when Virginie's eager watch at the crevice of the closely-drawn blind
ended only with a sigh of disappointment. If it had not been for his
mother's presence at the time, Pierre thought he should have told her
all. But how far was his mother in his cousin's confidence as regarded
the dismissal of the Norman?

"In a few days, however, Pierre felt almost sure that they had
established some new means of communication. Virginie went out for a
short time every day; but though Pierre followed her as closely as he
could without exciting her observation, he was unable to discover what
kind of intercourse she held with the Norman. She went, in general, the
same short round among the little shops in t