She stretched her hand toward the cemetery.  Never had she said as much since the day of her arrival, when she was taken with sudden illness at the same spot.  The rector looked attentively at his penitent, and the habit of penetration he had long acquired made him see that in those simple words he had won another triumph.  Veronique must have made a mighty effort over herself to break her twelve years’ silence with a speech that said so much.  The rector clasped his hands with a fervent gesture that was natural to him as he looked with deep emotion at the members of this family whose secrets had passed into his heart.

Gerard, to whom the words “peace and pardon” must have seemed strange, was bewildered.  Monsieur Ruffin, with his eyes fixed on Veronique, was stupefied.  At this instant the carriage came rapidly up the avenue.

“There are five of them!” cried the rector, who could see and count the travellers.

“Five!” exclaimed Gerard.  “Can five know more than two?”

“Ah,” cried Madame Graslin suddenly, grasping the rector’s arm, “the procureur-general is among them!  What is he doing here?”

“And papa Grossetete, too!” cried Francis.

“Madame,” said the rector, supporting Veronique, and leading her apart a few steps, “show courage; be worthy of yourself.”

“But what can he want?” she replied, leaning on the balustrade.  “Mother!” (the old woman ran to her daughter with an activity that belied her years.) “I shall see him again,” she said.

“As he comes with Monsieur Grossetete,” said the rector, “he can have none but good intentions.”

“Ah! monsieur, my child will die!” cried Madame Sauviat, seeing the effect of the rector’s words on her daughter’s face.  “How can her heart survive such emotions?  Monsieur Grossetete has always hitherto prevented that man from seeing Veronique.”

Madame Graslin’s face was on fire.

“Do you hate him so much?” said the Abbe Bonnet.

“She left Limoges to escape the sight of him, and to escape letting the whole town into her secrets,” said Madame Sauviat, terrified at the change she saw on Madame Graslin’s features.

“Do you not see that he will poison my few remaining hours?  When I ought to be thinking of heaven he will nail me to earth,” cried Veronique.

The rector took her arm and constrained her to walk aside with him.  When they were alone he stopped and gave her one of those angelic looks with which he was able to calm the violent convulsions of the soul.

“If it is really so,” he said, “as your confessor, I order you to receive him, to be kind and affectionate to him, to quit that garment of wrath, and forgive him as God will forgive you.  Can there still be the remains of passion of a soul I believed to be purified.  Burn this last incense on the altar of your penitence, or else your repentance is a lie.”

“There was still that effort to make—­and it is made,” she answered, wiping her eyes.  “The devil lurked in that last fold of my heart, and God, no doubt, put into Monsieur de Grandville’s mind the thought that brings him here.  Ah! how many times must God strike me?” she cried.