Though this letter of the youth whom in her innocence she called her lover was almost enigmatical to Pierrette, she believed in it with all her virgin faith.  Her heart was filled with that sensation which travellers in the desert feel when they see from afar the palm-trees round a well.  In a few days her misery would end—­Jacques said so.  She relied on this promise of her childhood’s friend; and yet, as she laid the letter beside the other, a dreadful thought came to her in foreboding words.

“Poor Jacques,” she said to herself, “he does not know the hole into which I have now fallen!”

Sylvie had heard Pierrette, and she had also heard Brigaut under her window.  She jumped out of bed and rushed to the window to look through the blinds into the square and there she saw, in the moonlight, a man hurrying in the direction of the colonel’s house, in front of which Brigaut happened to stop.  The old maid gently opened her door, went upstairs, was amazed to find a light in Pierrette’s room, looked through the keyhole, and could see nothing.

“Pierrette,” she said, “are you ill?”

“No, cousin,” said Pierrette, surprised.

“Why is your candle burning at this time of night?  Open the door; I must know what this means.”

Pierrette went to the door bare-footed, and as soon as Sylvie entered the room she saw the cord, which Pierrette had forgotten to put away, not dreaming of a surprise.  Sylvie jumped upon it.

“What is that for?” she asked.

“Nothing, cousin.”

“Nothing!” she cried.  “Always lying; you’ll never get to heaven that way.  Go to bed; you’ll take cold.”

She asked no more questions and went away, leaving Pierrette terrified by her unusual clemency.  Instead of exploding with rage, Sylvie had suddenly determined to surprise Pierrette and the colonel together, to seize their letters and confound the two lovers who were deceiving her.  Pierrette, inspired by a sense of danger, sewed the letters into her corset and covered them with calico.

Here end the loves of Pierrette and Brigaut.

Pierrette rejoiced in the thought that Jacques had determined to hold no communication with her for some days, because her cousin’s suspicions would be quieted by finding nothing to feed them.  Sylvie did in fact spend the next three nights on her legs, and each evening in watching the innocent colonel, without discovering either in him or in Pierrette, or in the house or out of it, anything that betrayed their understanding.  She sent Pierrette to confession, and seized that moment to search the child’s room, with the method and penetration of a spy or a custom-house officer.  She found nothing.  Her fury reached the apogee of human sentiments.  If Pierrette had been there she would certainly have struck her remorselessly.  To a woman of her temper, jealousy was less a sentiment than an occupation; she existed in it, it made her heart beat, she felt emotions hitherto completely unknown to her; the slightest sound or movement kept her on the qui vive; she watched Pierrette with gloomy intentness.