“There is the difficulty.  Shall I not seem as if wishing to pry into his secrets?”

“If the young lady had not been followed, I should have shared your scruples.  But she was watched, and is evidently in danger.  It is therefore, in my opinion, your duty to warn M. Hardy.  Suppose (which is not improbable) that the lady is married; would it not be better, for a thousand reasons, that M. Hardy should know all?”

“You are right, my good sister; I will follow your advice.  M. Hardy shall know everything.  But now that we have spoken of others, I have to speak of myself—­yes, of myself—­for it concerns a matter, on which may depend the happiness of my whole life,” added the smith, in a tone of seriousness, which struck his hearer.  “You know,” proceeded Agricola, after a moment’s silence, “that, from my childhood, I have never concealed anything from you—­that I have told you everything—­absolutely everything?”

“I know it, Agricola, I know it,” said the hunchback, stretching out her white and slender hand to the smith, who grasped it cordially, and thus continued:  “When I say everything, I am not quite exact—­for I have always concealed from you my little love-affairs—­because, though we may tell almost anything to a sister, there are subjects of which we ought not to speak to a good and virtuous girl, such as you are.”

“I thank you, Agricola.  I had remarked this reserve on your part,” observed the other, casting down her eyes, and heroically repressing the grief she felt; “I thank you.”

“But for the very reason, that I made it a duty never to speak to you of such love affairs, I said to myself, if ever it should happen that I have a serious passion—­such a love as makes one think of marriage—­oh! then, just as we tell our sister even before our father and mother, my good sister shall be the first to be informed of it.”

“You are very kind, Agricola.”

“Well then! the serious passion has come at last.  I am over head and ears in love, and I think of marriage.”

At these words of Agricola, poor Mother Bunch felt herself for an instant paralyzed.  It seemed as if all her blood was suddenly frozen in her veins.  For some seconds, she thought she was going to die.  Her heart ceased to beat; she felt it, not breaking, but melting away to nothing.  Then, the first blasting emotion over, like those martyrs who found, in the very excitement of pain, the terrible power to smile in the midst of tortures, the unfortunate girl found, in the fear of betraying the secret of her fatal and ridiculous love, almost incredible energy.  She raised her head, looked at the smith calmly, almost serenely, and said to him in a firm voice:  “Ah! so, you truly love?”

“That is to say, my good sister, that, for the last four days, I scarcely live at all—­or live only upon this passion.”

“It is only since four days that you have been in love?”

“Not more—­but time has nothing to do with it.”