“Is it possible to prevent provincials from talking about their neighbors?  Can any one prevent a gossip from maligning a woman who loves?  What measures can be taken to stop a public rumor?  If they say that I ill-treat her, it is for me—­to prove the contrary by my conduct with her, and not by violence.  It would be as ridiculous to seek a quarrel with Mercanson as to leave the country on account of gossip.  No, we must not leave the country; that would be a bad move; that would be to say to all the world that there is truth in its idle rumors, and to give excuse to the gossips.  We must neither go away nor take any notice of such things.”

I returned to Brigitte.  A half hour had passed, and I had changed my mind three times.  I dissuaded her from her plans; I told her what I had just done and why I had not carried out my first impulse.  She listened resignedly, yet she wished to go away; the house where her aunt had died had become odious to her.  Much effort and persuasion on my part were required to get her to consent to remain; finally I accomplished it.  We repeated that we would despise the world, that we would yield nothing, that we would not change our manner of life.  I swore that my love should console her for all her sorrows, and she pretended to hope for the best.  I told her that this circumstance had so enlightened me in the matter of the wrongs I had done her, that my conduct would prove my repentance, that I would drive from me as a phantom all the evil that remained in my heart; that hence forth she should not be offended either by my pride or by my caprices; and thus, sad and patient, her arms around my neck, she yielded obedience to the pure caprice that I myself mistook for a flash of reason.

One day I saw a little chamber she called her oratory; there was no furniture except a prie-dieu and a little altar with a cross and some vases of flowers.  As for the rest, the walls and curtains were as white as snow.  She shut herself up in that room at times, but rarely since I had known her.

I stepped to the door and saw Brigitte seated on the floor in the middle of the room, surrounded by the flowers she was throwing here and there.  She held in her hand a little wreath that appeared to be made of dried grass, and she was breaking it in pieces.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She trembled and stood up.

“It is nothing but a child’s plaything,” she said; “it is a rose wreath that has faded here in the oratory; I have come here to change my flowers, as I have not attended to them for some time.”

Her voice trembled, and she appeared to be about to faint.  I recalled that name of Brigitte la Rose that I had heard given her.  I asked her whether it was not her crown of roses that she had just broken thus.

“No,” she replied, turning pale.

“Yes,” I cried, “yes, on my life!  Give me the pieces.”

I gathered them up and placed them on the altar, then I was silent, my eyes fixed on the offering.