Then, one morning Marianne was astounded at finding Gregoire’s bedroom empty.  As a rule he came to kiss her.  Perhaps he had risen early, and had gone on some excursion in the environs.  But she trembled slightly when she remembered how lovingly he had twice caught her in his arms on the previous night when they were all retiring to bed.  And as she looked inquisitively round the room she noticed on the mantelshelf a letter addressed to her—­a prettily worded letter in which the young fellow begged her to forgive him for causing her grief, and asked her to excuse him with his father, for it was necessary that he should leave them for a time.  Of his reasons for doing so and his purpose, however, no particulars were given.

This family rending, this bad conduct on the part of the son who had been the most spoilt of all, and who, in a fit of sudden folly was the first to break the ties which united the household together, was a very painful blow for Marianne and Mathieu.  They were the more terrified since they divined that Gregoire had not gone off alone.  They pieced together the incidents of the deplorable affair.  Charlotte remembered that she had heard Gregoire go downstairs again, almost immediately after entering his bedroom, and before the servants had even bolted the house-doors for the night.  He had certainly rushed off to join Therese in some coppice, whence they must have hurried away to Vieux-Bourg station which the last train to Paris quitted at five-and-twenty minutes past midnight.  And it was indeed this which had taken place.  At noon the Froments already learnt that Lepailleur was creating a terrible scandal about the flight of Therese.  He had immediately gone to the gendarmes to shout the story to them, and demand that they should bring the guilty hussy back, chained to her accomplice, and both of them with gyves about their wrists.

He on his side had found a letter in his daughter’s bedroom, a plucky letter in which she plainly said that as she had been struck again the previous day, she had had enough of it, and was going off of her own free will.  Indeed, she added that she was taking Gregoire with her, and was quite big and old enough, now that she was two-and-twenty, to know what she was about.  Lepailleur’s fury was largely due to this letter which he did not dare to show abroad; besides which, his wife, ever at war with him respecting their son Antonin, not only roundly abused Therese, but sneeringly declared that it might all have been expected, and that he, the father, was the cause of the gad-about’s misconduct.  After that, they engaged in fisticuffs; and for a whole week the district did nothing but talk about the flight of one of the Chantebled lads with the girl of the mill, to the despair of Mathieu and Marianne, the latter of whom in particular grieved over the sorry business.