The public prosecutor spun out a whole drama to bring Mme. de Dey’s son to her house of a night.  The mayor had a belief in a priest who had refused the oath, a refugee from La Vendee; but this left him not a little embarrassed how to account for the purchase of a hare on a Friday.  The president of the district had strong leanings toward a Chouan chief, or a Vendean leader hotly pursued.  Others voted for a noble escaped from the prisons of Paris.  In short, one and all suspected that the Countess had been guilty of some piece of generosity that the law of those days defined as a crime, an offense that was like to bring her to the scaffold.  The public prosecutor, moreover, said, in a low voice, that they must hush the matter up, and try to save the unfortunate lady from the abyss toward which she was hastening.

“If you spread reports about,” he added, “I shall be obliged to take cognizance of the matter, and to search the house, and then!...”

He said no more, but everyone understood what was left unsaid.

The Countess’s real friends were so much alarmed for her, that on the morning of the third day the Procureur Syndic of the commune made his wife write a few lines to persuade Mme. de Dey to hold her reception as usual that evening.  The old merchant took a bolder step.  He called that morning upon the lady.  Strong in the thought of the service he meant to do her, he insisted that he must see Mme. de Dey, and was amazed beyond expression to find her out in the garden, busy gathering the last autumn flowers in her borders to fill the vases.

“She has given refuge to her lover, no doubt,” thought the old man, struck with pity for the charming woman before him.

The Countess’s face wore a strange look, that confirmed his suspicions.  Deeply moved by the devotion so natural to women, but that always touches us, because all men are flattered by the sacrifices that any woman makes for any one of them, the merchant told the Countess of the gossip that was circulating in the town, and showed her the danger that she was running.  He wound up at last with saying that “if there are some of our public functionaries who are sufficiently ready to pardon a piece of heroism on your part so long as it is a priest that you wish to save, no one will show you any mercy if it is discovered that you are sacrificing yourself to the dictates of your heart.”

At these words Mme. de Dey gazed at her visitor with a wild excitement in her manner that made him tremble, old though he was.

“Come in,” she said, taking him by the hand to bring him to her room, and as soon as she had assured herself that they were alone, she drew a soiled, torn letter from her bodice.—­“Read it!” she cried, with a violent effort to pronounce the words.

She dropped as if exhausted into her armchair.  While the old merchant looked for his spectacles and wiped them, she raised her eyes, and for the first time looked at him with curiosity; then, in an uncertain voice, “I trust in you,” she said softly.