In the provinces there is always a valve or a faucet through which gossip leaks from one social set to another.  Vinet knew all the slurs cast upon the Rogrons in the salons from which they were now excluded.  The deputy-judge and archaeologist Desfondrilles belonged to neither party.  With other independents like him, he repeated what he heard on both sides and Vinet made the most of it.  The lawyer’s spiteful tongue put venom into Madame Tiphaine’s speeches, and by showing Rogron and Sylvie the ridicule they had brought upon themselves he roused an undying spirit of hatred in those bitter natures, which needed an object for their petty passions.

A few days later Vinet brought his wife, a well-bred woman, neither pretty nor plain, timid, very gentle, and deeply conscious of her false position.  Madame Vinet was fair-complexioned, faded by the cares of her poor household, and very simply dressed.  No woman could have pleased Sylvie more.  Madame Vinet endured her airs, and bent before them like one accustomed to subjection.  On the poor woman’s rounded brow and delicately timid cheek and in her slow and gentle glance, were the traces of deep reflection, of those perceptive thoughts which women who are accustomed to suffer bury in total silence.

The influence of the colonel (who now displayed to Sylvie the graces of a courtier, in marked contradiction to his usual military brusqueness), together with that of the astute Vinet, was soon to harm the Breton child.  Shut up in the house, no longer allowed to go out except in company with her old cousin, Pierrette, that pretty little squirrel, was at the mercy of the incessant cry, “Don’t touch that, child, let that alone!” She was perpetually being lectured on her carriage and behavior; if she stooped or rounded her shoulders her cousin would call to her to be as erect as herself (Sylvie was rigid as a soldier presenting arms to his colonel); sometimes indeed the ill-natured old maid enforced the order by slaps on the back to make the girl straighten up.

Thus the free and joyous little child of the Marais learned by degrees to repress all liveliness and to make herself, as best she could, an automaton.

V

History of poor cousins in the home of rich ones

One evening, which marked the beginning of Pierrette’s second phase of life in her cousin’s house, the child, whom the three guests had not seen during the evening, came into the room to kiss her relatives and say good-night to the company.  Sylvie turned her cheek coldly to the pretty creature, as if to avoid kissing her.  The motion was so cruelly significant that the tears sprang to Pierrette’s eyes.

“Did you prick yourself, little girl?” said the atrocious Vinet.

“What is the matter?” asked Sylvie, severely.

“Nothing,” said the poor child, going up to Rogron.

“Nothing?” said Sylvie, “that’s nonsense; nobody cries for nothing.”