In spite of the poor child’s strength of heart she was henceforth crushed down physically as well as mentally.  Her cousins had less consideration for her than for a servant; she belonged to them!  She was scolded for mere nothings, for an atom of dust left on a glass globe or a marble mantelpiece.  The handsome ornaments she had once admired now became odious to her.  No matter how she strove to do right, her inexorable cousins always found something to reprove in whatever she did.  In the course of two years Pierrette never received the slightest praise, or heard a kindly word.  Happiness for her lay in not being scolded.  She bore with angelic patience the morose ill-humor of the two celibates, to whom all tender feelings were absolutely unknown, and who daily made her feel her dependence on them.

Such a life for a young girl, pressed as it were between the two chops of a vise, increased her illness.  She began to feel violent internal distresses, secret pangs so sudden in their attacks that her strength was undermined and her natural development arrested.  By slow degrees and through dreadful, though hidden sufferings, the poor child came to the state in which the companion of her childhood found her when he sang to her his Breton ditty at the dawn of the October day.

VI

AN OLD MAID’S JEALOUSY

Before we relate the domestic drama which the coming of Jacques Brigaut was destined to bring about in the Rogron family it is best to explain how the lad came to be in Provins; for he is, as it were, a somewhat mute personage on the scene.

When he ran from the house Brigaut was not only frightened by Pierrette’s gesture, he was horrified by the change he saw in his little friend.  He could scarcely recognize the voice, the eyes, the gestures that were once so lively, gay, and withal so tender.  When he had gained some distance from the house his legs began to tremble under him; hot flushes ran down his back.  He had seen the shadow of Pierrette, but not Pierrette herself!  The lad climbed to the Upper town till he found a spot from which he could see the square and the house where Pierrette lived.  He gazed at it mournfully, lost in many thoughts, as though he were entering some grief of which he could not see the end.  Pierrette was ill; she was not happy; she pined for Brittany—­what was the matter with her?  All these questions passed and repassed through his heart and rent it, revealing to his own soul the extent of his love for his little adopted sister.

It is extremely rare to find a passion existing between two children of opposite sexes.  The charming story of Paul and Virginia does not, any more than this of Pierrette and Brigaut, answer the question put by that strange moral fact.  Modern history offers only the illustrious instance of the Marchesa di Pescara and her husband.  Destined to marry by their parents from their earliest years, they adored each other and were married, and their union gave