Thenceforth Pierrette became a necessity to the lives of her cousins.  From the day of her coming their minds were occupied,—­first, with her outfit, and then with the novelty of a third presence.  But every new thing, a sentiment and even a tyranny, is moulded as time goes on into fresh shapes.  Sylvie began by calling Pierrette “my dear,” or “little one.”  Then she abandoned the gentler terms for “Pierrette” only.  Her reprimands, at first only cross, became sharp and angry; and no sooner were their feet on the path of fault-finding than the brother and sister made rapid strides.  They were no longer bored to death!  It was not their deliberate intention to be wicked and cruel; it was simply the blind instinct of an imbecile tyranny.  The pair believed they were doing Pierrette a service, just as they had thought their harshness a benefit to their apprentices.

Pierrette, whose true and noble and extreme sensibility was the antipodes of the Rogrons’ hardness, had a dread of being scolded; it wounded her so sharply that the tears would instantly start in her beautiful, pure eyes.  She had a great struggle with herself before she could repress the enchanting sprightliness which made her so great a favorite elsewhere.  After a time she displayed it only in the homes of her little friends.  By the end of the first month she had learned to be passive in her cousins’ house,—­so much so that Rogron one day asked her if she was ill.  At that sudden question, she ran to the end of the garden, and stood crying beside the river, into which her tears may have fallen as she herself was about to fall into the social torrent.

One day, in spite of all her care, she tore her best reps frock at Madame Tiphaine’s, where she was spending a happy day.  The poor child burst into tears, foreseeing the cruel things which would be said to her at home.  Questioned by her friends, she let fall a few words about her terrible cousin.  Madame Tiphaine happened to have some reps exactly like that of the frock, and she put in a new breadth herself.  Mademoiselle Rogron found out the trick, as she expressed it, which the little devil had played her.  From that day forth she refused to let Pierrette go to any of “those women’s” houses.

The life the poor girl led in Provins was divided into three distinct phases.  The first, already shown, in which she had some joy mingled with the cold kindness of her cousins and their sharp reproaches, lasted three months.  Sylvie’s refusal to let her go to her little friends, backed by the necessity of beginning her education, ended the first phase of her life at Provins, the only period when that life was bearable to her.