Monsieur, seeing me grow thin and pale, declared that I must have a change, I must go somewhere, to the sea-shore.  To the sea-shore!  No, I would not go to the sea-shore, or to any other shore; a stranded vessel, I could not struggle from the place of shipwreck.

Monsieur grew vexed and anxious, when I stubbornly shook my head.  And when week after week I still refused, he grew strangely uneasy.  I had better go; if I would not go alone, he would go with me, shut up the shop, and take a holiday.

I considered the matter that day.  The project was a wild one; at this busiest season of the year, it would be an injury to our business.  And what might the neighbors say?  It might lead them to unpleasant suspicions.  We were not popular among them.  No, it would not do.

I explained this to Monsieur very calmly at the supper-table.  His face was pale and quiet as usual.  He did not interrupt me.  When I concluded, he rose as if he would go out, but turning back suddenly and striking the table with his clenched fist,—­

“God!” he exclaimed.  “Woman would you see me die like a dog?  The neighbors! for all I know, they have got me at their finger-ends now,—­the vile rabble!  That old hag, Madame Justine, at the ribbon-shop below,—­some demon possessed her to look out that night when SHE came crawling home.  She noted her well with her greedy eyes; some one so like my dear first wife, she told me.  There is mischief and death in her eyes.  She knows or guesses too much.”

“What can she guess?” I asked; “she has only lately come into the neighborhood.”

In answer to this, Monsieur informed me that she professed to have been an old friend of his wife’s, who, in times gone by, half bewildered with her troubles, had probably dropped many unguarded words in this woman’s presence.  Madame C——­ had died (to her old home) while this woman was away on a visit.  “Ah!” she said, “she had her misgivings many a time.  Did the same doctor attend Madame C——­ who prescribed for little Jacques? He ought to be hung, then.  Ah, well, if all men had their deserts, she knew many things that would hang some folks who looted all fair and square, and held their guilty heads higher than their neighbors.”

“Well?” I said.

“Well!—­you women are so virtuous, you have no mercy, Madame.  Go, hang—­go, drown the wretch who comes under the malediction of the ladies!  Oh, there is nothing too hard for him!  And this one owed me a grudge lately about a mistake,—­a little mistake I made in an account with her, and would not alter because I thought it all right.”

The preparations were going on silently and steadily that night.  I would go anywhere now, anything would I do, to escape the fate whose stealthy footsteps were tracking us out.  Well I knew, that, once in the power of the law, its firm grasp would wrest every secret from the deepest depths where it was hidden.  Once out of the city, we could readily take flight, if immediate danger threatened.