Convent du Sacre Coeur in Aubette,
would send for her in order that the demand for her daughter's hand and
the preliminaries of the marriage might be settled, had come first Leon
Roussel's strange absence and the visits of Nicolas Marais, and now the
gossip about Elise Lesage.

"I will know the right of it to-day," Madame Famette thinks, and she
lashes out at Mouton in an unusual fashion.

The first customer at her stall is Madame Houlard, the wife of the
tailor and town councillor. "How is Marie?" she says: "the market does
not seem itself without Marie Famette."

Madame Famette smiles, but she sighs too: "My poor little girl is ill;"
and then her eyes rove round the market, and fix on Mademoiselle Lesage
bustling in and out among her clients. "Have you then heard that Elise
Lesage is to be married?" she says in a low, cautious voice.

Madame Houlard's flat, good-tempered face grows troubled: "Ah yes, I
have heard some talk; and listen to that noisy fellow;" then she points
to Floris Marceau, who is gesticulating and vehement as usual.

She is surprised to find her arm tightly grasped by the large hand of
the fruit-seller: "Madame Houlard, tell me the truth: who is to marry
with Elise Lesage?"

Madame Houlard leads a very tranquil life: her husband is the most
placid man in Aubette, and she has never had any children to disturb the
calm of existence. She is ruffled and shocked by Madame Famette's
vehemence. She bridles and releases her plump arm: "Ma foi, my friend!
what will you? Gossip comes, and gossip goes. I believe all I hear--that
is but convenable--but then, look you, I am quite as willing to believe
in the contradiction which so frequently follows. One should never
excite one's self about anything: be sure of this, my friend, it is bad
for the nerves. What is salsify a bundle to-day?"

Madame Famette, as has been said, has a sieve-like nature with regard to
the passing away of wrath, but still her anger is easily roused. "It
would be simpler to tell me what you have heard," she says in a very
snappish accent. "When I want a lecture I can get it from monsieur le
cure."

Madame Houlard had felt unwilling to tell her news, but this aggravating
sentence goaded it out of her mouth: "It is to Monsieur Roussel, the
timber-merchant, that Elise Lesage is to be married: see, he is talking
to her now." There is a slight tone of satisfaction in Madame Houlard's
smooth voice, and yet in her heart she is sorry for