“Savinien in prison!” she said.

With these words a shower of tears fell from her eyes and she began to sob.

“Saved!” thought the doctor, who was holding her pulse with great anxiety.  “Alas! she has all the sensitiveness of my poor wife,” he thought, fetching a stethoscope which he put to Ursula’s heart, applying his ear to it.  “Ah, that’s all right,” he said to himself.  “I did not know, my darling, that you loved any one as yet,” he added, looking at her; “but think out loud to me as you think to yourself; tell me all that has passed between you.”

“I do not love him, godfather; we have never spoken to each other,” she answered, sobbing.  “But to hear that he is in prison, and to know that you—­harshly—­refused to get him out—­you, so good!”

“Ursula, my dear little good angel, if you do not love him why did you put that little red dot against Saint Savinien’s day just as you put one before that of Saint Denis?  Come, tell me everything about your little love-affair.”

Ursula blushed, swallowed a few tears, and for a moment there was silence between them.

“Surely you are not afraid of your father, your friend, mother, doctor, and godfather, whose heart is now more tender than it ever has been.”

“No, no, dear godfather,” she said.  “I will open my heart to you.  Last May, Monsieur Savinien came to see his mother.  Until then I had never taken notice of him.  When he left home to live in Paris I was a child, and I did not see any difference between him and—­all of you—­except perhaps that I loved you, and never thought of loving any one else.  Monsieur Savinien came by the mail-post the night before his mother’s fete-day; but we did not know it.  At seven the next morning, after I had said my prayers, I opened the window to air my room and I saw the windows in Monsieur Savinien’s room open; and Monsieur Savinien was there, in a dressing gown, arranging his beard; in all his movements there was such grace—­I mean, he seemed to me so charming.  He combed his black moustache and the little tuft on his chin, and I saw his white throat—­so round!—­must I tell you all?  I noticed that his throat and face and that beautiful black hair were all so different from yours when I watch you arranging your beard.  There came—­I don’t know how—­a sort of glow into my heart, and up into my throat, my head; it came so violently that I sat down—­I couldn’t stand, I trembled so.  But I longed to see him again, and presently I got up; he saw me then, and, just for play, he sent me a kiss from the tips of his fingers and—­”

“And?”

“And then,” she continued, “I hid myself—­I was ashamed, but happy —­why should I be ashamed of being happy?  That feeling—­it dazzled my soul and gave it some power, but I don’t know what—­it came again each time I saw within me the same young face.  I loved this feeling, violent as it was.  Going to mass, some unconquerable power made me look at Monsieur Savinien with his mother