In spite of difficulties, the Countess had maintained her independence with considerable skill until the day when, by an inexplicable want of prudence, she took occasion to close her salon.  So deep and sincere was the interest that she inspired, that those who usually filled her drawing-room felt a lively anxiety when the news was spread; then, with the frank curiosity characteristic of provincial manners, they went to inquire into the misfortune, grief, or illness that had befallen Mme. de Dey.

To all these questions, Brigitte, the housekeeper, answered with the same formula:  her mistress was keeping her room, and would see no one, not even her own servants.  The almost claustral lives of dwellers in small towns fosters a habit of analysis and conjectural explanation of the business of everybody else; so strong is it, that when everyone had exclaimed over poor Mme. de Dey (without knowing whether the lady was overcome by joy or sorrow), each one began to inquire into the causes of her sudden seclusion.

“If she were ill, she would have sent for the doctor,” said gossip number one; “now the doctor has been playing chess in my house all day.  He said to me, laughing, that in these days there is only one disease, and that, unluckily, it is incurable.”

The joke was hazarded discreetly.  Women and men, elderly folk and young girls, forthwith betook themselves to the vast fields of conjecture.  Everyone imagined that there was some secret in it, and every head was busy with the secret.  Next day the suspicions became malignant.  Everyone lives in public in a small town, and the women-kind were the first to find out that Brigitte had laid in an extra stock of provisions.  The thing could not be disputed.  Brigitte had been seen in the market-place betimes that morning, and, wonderful to relate, she had bought the one hare to be had.  The whole town knew that Mme. de Dey did not care for game.  The hare became a starting point for endless conjectures.

Elderly gentlemen, taking their constitutional, noticed a sort of suppressed bustle in the Countess’s house; the symptoms were the more apparent because the servants were at evident pains to conceal them.  The man-servant was beating a carpet in the garden.  Only yesterday no one would have remarked the fact, but to-day everybody began to build romances upon that harmless piece of household stuff.  Everyone had a version.

On the following day, that on which Mme. de Dey gave out that she was not well, the magnates of Carentan went to spend the evening at the mayor’s brother’s house.  He was a retired merchant, a married man, a strictly honorable soul; everyone respected him, and the Countess held him in high regard.  There all the rich widows’ suitors were fain to invent more or less probable fictions, each one thinking the while how to turn to his own advantage the secret that compelled her to compromise herself in such a manner.