THE BLACKSMITH'S
HAMMER
: :   : :  OR  : :   : :
THE PEASANT CODE

Bulwer Lytton observes of fiction that, when aspiring at something higher than mere romance, it does not pervert, but elucidates the facts of the times in which the scene is placed; hence, that fiction serves to illustrate those truths which history is too often compelled to leave to the tale-teller, the dramatist and the poet. In this story, The Blacksmith's Hammer; or, The Peasant Code—the seventeenth of the charming series of Eugene Sue's historic novels, The Mysteries of the People; or, History of a Proletarian Family Across the Ages—the author reaches a height in which are combined all the elements that Bulwer Lytton distributes among history, tale, drama and poetry.

The history is clean cut; the tale fascinates; its dramatic presentation is matchless; last, not least, the poetic note is lyric. As historian, as tale-teller, as dramatist and as a poet the author excels himself in this narrative, that serves at once as a sequel of the age described in the previous story, The Pocket Bible; or, Christian the Printer, and as prelude to the great epopee of the next story that deals with the French Revolution.

DANIEL DE LEON.

New York, March, 1910.

I, Salaun Lebrenn, the son of Stephan, who was the son of Antonicq, who finished the legend of The Pocket Bible, begun by his grandfather Christian the printer—I, Salaun Lebrenn, am the writer of the following narrative.

To you, my last-born, Alain Lebrenn, the child of my old age, I bequeath this legend, a continuation of our plebeian annals. I shall join to these pages the head of a blacksmith's hammer. It will increase the number of our family relics. You are to transmit it, jointly with our annals, to your own descendants.

A second dash of the sea finished and carried off the brigantine's rudder. The vessel's position became desperate. The captain fired a last signal of distress, still hoping to be heard by the pilots of Delft and to bring them to his aid. The signal was heard. A caravel, a sort of solid yet light ship, that, thanks to its special build, is better able than any other to beat its way against violent winds and over heavy seas, was seen to emerge from the harbor. Tacking with as much skill as daring, at times disappearing in the troughs of the towering waves that seemed to swallow her up, the caravel would again reappear riding their crests and almost lying upon her white sails that grazed the foam of the billows as the wings of a sea bird graze the water. At the risk of foundering, the caravel steadily approached the disabled brigantine.

"Ah," cried the captain of the St. Eloi, "to dare come out to our help in such a storm, the commander of that caravel must be as generous a man as skilful and intrepid a sailor!"

The Marchioness of Tremblay was speedily installed at The Hague in the residence of Monsieur Tilly, where she occupied on the first floor a vast apartment furnished with the luxury peculiar to those republican navigators, who, trafficking with the whole world, gathered in their homes most precious fabrics, porcelains and furnitures from China and the East Indies, vases from Japan, lacquer cabinets and folding-screens from Coromandel, carpets from Smyrna, glasswork from Venice. All these rare curiosities were found in profusion at Monsieur Tilly's residence. Still suffering from the fatigue of her rough passage, the Marchioness was partly stretched upon a reclining chair, placed near a glass door that opened upon a balcony, sheltered from the rays of the sun and the public gaze by a sort of netting striped red and white. Mademoiselle Plouernel sat not far from her aunt, who, continuing the conversation that the two had been carrying on, proceeded to say:

"You will have to admit, my dear, that the lot of Mademoiselle Kerouaille is worthy of envy. The King—"

But noticing that her niece was not listening, the Marchioness broke off, remarking:

"Bertha, your absentmindedness is singular. What is it that you are thinking about? Tell me!"

And after a moment's silence she continued:

"But there is in all this something that seems unexplainable to me. Monsieur Noirmont left London two or three days after the date of the letter that informed you of my brother's illness, and still Monsieur Noirmont stated to us only a short time ago, at Versailles, that at the time of his departure from England he left Raoul in perfect health."

"Monsieur Noirmont must have wished to conceal the truth from us," replied the Marchioness, slightly embarrassed; "people always dislike to be the bearers of bad news."

"And yet nothing seemed more sincere than the extreme astonishment with which Monsieur Noirmont was struck when he learned from us of my brother's illness, and—"

"Good God, my dear, I wish I had your facility for doubting facts," said the Marchioness, impatiently interrupting her niece; "but I am not allowed to entertain any such doubts. I only console myself in advance with the thought of the excellent influence that will be exercised upon Raoul's health by my presence, and yours especially—"

"Mine?" answered Bertha sadly; "I hope it will be so."

"That should be, to you, not a hope, but a certainty."

"My elder brother has until now shown so much coolness towards me—"

"It is not a reproach—it is the expression of a sorrow. For the rest, Raoul and I have spent our childhood and the first years of our youth almost as strangers to each other. He lived near my father, I near my mother. I can not be surprised at Raoul's indifference towards me."

"You greatly err, my dear, with regard to what you wrongly, very wrongly, term his indifference. Do you forget that by virtue of his right of primogeniture, with the death of my brother, he has become the head of our family? The quality of head of our family confers upon Raoul the full authority that your father and mother were vested with during their lives over their children. As a matter of course, such authority imposes upon Raoul, in his relations towards you and Guy, your second brother, a certain degree of reserve, of gravity, I might say of severity that must in no wise be confounded with indifference. He, on the contrary, is exceptionally attached to you. But I must say—and I beg you not to see in my words even the shadow of a reproach," the Marchioness added, insinuatingly, "I must admit that a certain turn to freedom in your disposition, a certain stubborn way of looking at some things from a viewpoint that is wholly opposed to Raoul's, may have occasionally, I shall not say made him take umbrage at you, but may have given some uneasiness to the warm solicitude that he entertains for you—seeing that it is his duty to fill towards you the strict functions of a father."

"Your father's loss must, accordingly, be less irreparable to you than your mother's," observed the Marchioness with some bitterness; "to say the least, the difference that you establish in your grief for the departed ones, is strange."

"Aunt," replied Bertha with a firm voice, "I respected my father and adored my mother. She nursed me, brought me up, educated me. I never left her. My happiest days were spent at her side in Brittany, in the retirement of our Castle of Plouernel, where I spent my first eighteen years, while all that time my father lived at court. I barely saw him once every year for a short time during his transient visits to the castle when the hunting season would bring him to his domains. So you see, my mother has left me numerous tokens of remembrance. They were continuous and loving, profoundly loving. They render, they will ever render her loss—or rather, her absence—irreparable to me, at least in this world. But let us return to Raoul. As I told you a moment ago, he always showed himself, even when still young, cold and even haughty towards me, whenever he accompanied my father into Brittany, and he felt offended at my having my own way of looking at things, a way that frequently was different from his own."

"In that case I must be an exception to the general rule; but that is of no consequence. Believe me, aunt, I have the liveliest desire to find myself mistaken with regard to Raoul's sentiments towards me; and, I must admit it, I have been profoundly touched by his request to see me at a time when, as I hear, he is seized with a grave disease, the reality of which I still wish I could doubt. I did not expect such a proof of tenderness on his part. And so, as I said before, I hope Raoul's illness has not grown worse, seeing that, alas! like so many others, he has preserved the prejudice of death, a thing that adds such cruel agonies to all illness."

"The prejudice of death!" repeated the Marchioness, shrugging her shoulders and hardly able to control herself. "That is one of your extravagances! You set yourself up in rebellion against our holy religion!"

"A sublime extravagance!" replied Bertha with a radiant smile. "It suppresses superstitions; it frees us from the terror of decease; it imparts to us the certainty of living anew near those whom we have loved."

"A distemper of languor?" replied Mademoiselle Plouernel pensively. "It seems to me such a disease is generally preceded by symptoms of dejection and sadness; but Monsieur Noirmont said to us that when he left Raoul, my brother's spirits, good looks and genuinely French mirthfulness eclipsed the most brilliant seigneurs of the court of King Charles II."

"Oh, I doubt not that! Poor Raoul is capable of the greatest sacrifices in order worthily to represent his master, our great King; he would even suppress his physical pains and moral sufferings."

"Excuse me, aunt, but I am unable to understand you. I was not aware that my brother had a political mission to fill."

"What did you say about her, aunt?"

"I was saying: Admit that the lot of the beautiful Mademoiselle Kerouaille, who is to-day the Duchess of Portsmouth, and one of the greatest ladies of England, by reason of the favor that she has received, is a lot worthy of envy."

Bertha of Plouernel shuddered; her beautiful and usually pale visage was suffused by a blush; her black eyebrows contracted; and, gazing at the Marchioness with undisguised amazement, she said:

"Is it to me that you put such a question?"

"What astonishes you, my dear?"

"You ask me whether the lot of Mademoiselle Kerouaille seems to me worthy of being envied?"

"Why, yes, my dear child; the question is quite natural."

"Truly, niece, I drop from the clouds!" answered the Marchioness with profound sincerity. "What! Do I despise you because I mention to you the enviable lot of a noble young girl who has had the signal honor of serving the interests of the great King, our neighbor—and of meriting the affection and favors of such a powerful monarch!"

"Madam," replied Bertha, interrupting the Marchioness with a trembling voice, "during the nearly eighteen months since I had the misfortune of losing my mother, I have lived with you in Paris or Versailles; I thought you knew me somewhat; I find that I am mistaken, since you look surprised to see me revolt at infamy, and since you dare to ask me such a question."

"Infamy! In truth, you are losing your mind, my dear niece."

"Not one, but many infamies," Bertha of Plouernel proceeded, with biting satire. "Madam, I have no choice but to say so plainly to you. Thanks to the licence in morals that reigns in your salon, at court and everywhere else, I have despite myself learned things that a young girl should never as much as suspect—the principles that guide the conduct of the great world."

"And what did you learn, niece?"

"One moment, niece. You are mistaken in your appreciations."

"Madam, I said there was not one but several infamies. Did I exaggerate? Let us number them: speculating upon the dissoluteness of the King of England, Louis XIV sends his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Orleans, to fill the role of a coupler—is not that enough of an infamy? And when we see that princess lowering herself to such an ignoble commerce, towards whom? towards her own brother—is there not in that a double infamy?"

"Once more, my niece, what do you know about the negotiations between princes?"

"Finally, Mademoiselle Kerouaille, an accomplice in the ignominious transaction, sells herself to the King of England and accepts the duchy of Portsmouth as the price of her public shame—a further infamy! Shame upon these execrable beings!"

"It is true, madam! I forgot that a Prince of the Catholic Church, Bossuet, the Bishop of Meaux, dared to say, in the very house of God, in the presence of the court, assembled on that occasion to hear the funeral oration on the Duchess of Orleans: 'She went on a mission to unite two kingdoms by pleasing methods, and her own virtue was the sole mediator between the two Kings.' Is such language not infamous enough on the lips of a man invested with an august character? Hypocrisy, servility, cowardice—what apanages to a priest who, rather than corrupt, should purify the human race!"

After having first betrayed her sincere astonishment at the vehement indignation of Mademoiselle Plouernel, and after a sense of suppressed anger and even rage succeeded her astonishment, the Marchioness of Tremblay collected herself, reflected for a moment, and promptly imparting to her features the sweetest expression that they could assume, and to her voice the most affectionate accents into which she was capable of modulating it, she rose from her reclining chair and said to her niece, who was still trembling with contempt and disgust:

"Dear child—come to my arms. Let me embrace you—you are an angel."

Not a little astonished at this outburst of tenderness, the young lady hesitated to respond to the invitation of her aunt, who repeated:

"A trial?" queried Mademoiselle Plouernel without any effort at concealing her incredulity; but immediately after, and yielding to the impulse of all pure and straightforward characters, who are ever more disposed to believe good than evil, Bertha approached the Marchioness, who, taking her niece in her arms, pressed the noble girl to her heart and kissed her effusively.

"Blessed be God! It was only a trial!" repeated the young girl, smiling with gratification and feeling her chest relieved of a heavy weight. "But aunt, dear aunt, I mean not to reprove you—only those are tried who are doubted. Did you doubt me?"

"No; of course not! But in our days one sees a King's love turn so many young heads, even the most solid, that—"

"And you mistrusted the solidity of mine?"

"However certain I was, I wished, dear niece, to see you prove it in all the luster of good judgment and purity. Only, and neither do I now mean to convey a reproach, I do deplore that a young person of your birth should, as it sometimes happens with you, forget herself to the point of speaking irreverently of the priests, the bishops, the Princes of the Church, and above all of the great King, our master, of whom your brother has the honor of being one of the most faithful, the most devoted servants."

"Do doubt; but after God, come the priests, the ministers, the Pope, the bishops, and then comes the King, to whom we owe blind submission, boundless devotion, pious respect."

"Pious respect! When at Versailles I saw that King promenading in public in one carriage with the Queen his wife and his two mistresses—the old and the new—Mademoiselle La Valiere and Madam Montespan! Is such audacity in bad morals to be respected? No! I shall not respect that infamous King who surrounds himself with high-born courtesans!"

"In truth, my dear, you are losing your reason. The violence of your language! Where can you have drawn such principles from?"

"Oh, my niece, in their fervent adoration of their much beloved sovereign, La Valiere, Montespan and the Queen do as people do who make to God a sacrifice of their pains—they offer their torn hearts to their idol, the handsomest, the greatest King in the whole world!"

The Marchioness of Tremblay had her secret reasons to suppress her own sentiments, and not to fulminate against what she termed the "enormities of her niece," who, however, on this occasion, had given stronger vent than ever before to her hostility for the "idol" who was desolating Gaul. Accordingly, Bertha's aunt contented herself with a few forced smiles, and seeking to give a different turn to the conversation that, besides being generally distasteful to her, threw doubts into her mind concerning the secret plans that she was pursuing, she observed in a mild tone:

"After all, my dear, the unwonted vehemence of your language has its excuse in this, that the contagion of the country on whose shores we suffered shipwreck has smitten you. This wicked little heretical republic, once so severely chastised by Louis XIV, has always held our great King in particular aversion. The heretical and republican pestilence must have mounted to your head; who knows," she added with an affectation of archness, "but you may come out of the country a full-fledged Huguenot."

"Alas, it is but too true. The apostasy of that Plouernel is a blot upon our family. He was the youngest son of the family. After his eldest brother, the Count, and the latter's son, the Viscount, were both killed in the front ranks of the royal and Catholic army, at the battle of Roche-la-Belle, fighting against the rebellious heretics, the Huguenot colonel became by that catastrophe the head of our house, and came into possession of its vast domains. Unfortunately, his son shared the paternal vice of heresy, but at last his grandson, who was my father, re-entered, thanks to God, the bosom of the Catholic Church, and resumed the observance of our old traditions of love, respect and loyalty to our Kings. Let us leave the two Plouernels, the only two unworthy members of our family, buried in their double felony. We should endeavor to forget that the two ever lived."

As Mademoiselle Plouernel was saying these last words she happened to cast her eyes in the direction of the net awning that sheltered from the rays of the sun the wide balcony near which she was seated. She remained silent for a moment, while her eyes, looking intently into the space that stretched before Monsieur Tilly's house, seemed to follow with so much interest someone who was passing on the street, that, half rising from her easy-chair, the Marchioness inquisitively asked her niece:

"What is it you see out there? You seem to be absorbed in deep contemplation."

"I am looking at the young mariner whom you know," answered Bertha without evincing the slightest embarrassment; "he was just passing with a grey-haired man, I doubt not his father; there is a marked resemblance between the two. Both have very sympathetic ways and faces."

"Of what mariner are you speaking, if you please? I know nobody of that class."

"Well! And did not Abbot Boujaron give the mariner ten louis in my name, in payment for the service that he rendered us? We are quits with him."

"It is true—and immediately upon receiving the remuneration, which went unaccompanied by a single courteous word, or a single expression that came from the heart, the young mariner turned, threw the ten louis into the cap of an invalid sailor who was begging on the wharf, and our generous rescuer said with a smile to the poor man: 'Take this, my friend, here are ten louis that Monsieur the Abbot gives you—for you to pray for the absolution of his sins; we all need being prayed for, abbots as much as anybody else.' And with a respectful salute he walked away."

"And that was what I call a piece of extreme impertinence!" interjected the Marchioness, interrupting her niece. "The idea of giving the ten louis to the beggar to pray for the absolution of the Abbot's sins! Was not that to insinuate that the holy man had a heavily loaded conscience? I was not aware of the fellow's effrontery and ingratitude; I was still too sea-sick and under the effect of the fright we went through. Well, then, to return to the salt water rat, the fellow's disdain for the remuneration offered him, cancels even more completely whatever debt we may have owed him."

"And for what purpose did you make the kind inquiry, dear niece?"

"I wish to commission Monsieur Tilly to assure our generous rescuer of our gratitude, and to ask him to excuse the strange conduct of Monsieur the Abbot towards him—excuses that, I must admit, I had not the courage to offer on the spot; I felt so confused at the humiliation that he was put to, and, besides, I felt too indignant at the conduct of the Abbot to trust myself to speak to him. Just now, as I saw him crossing the square—"

"You probably had a wish to call him from the window?" asked the Marchioness suffocating with repressed anger. "Truly, dear niece, you are losing your head more and more. Such a disregard for propriety on the part of a person of your quality!"

"I never thought of calling our countryman out of the window; I was only sorry that Monsieur Tilly did not happen to be with us at the time. He might have gone out after him and asked him to step in."

"My dear, what you say upon this subject is so absurd, that I even prefer to hear your praises of Colonel Plouernel—although that topic is not of the most edifying."

"The conclusion is simple and touching, it serves as the moral to the manuscript left by Colonel Plouernel; he closes it with these words to his son: 'My child, the death of my dear brother has made me master of the immense domains of our house in Auvergne, in Beauvoisis and in Brittany; thousands of vassals inhabit those domains. But never forget this—our vast acres and large wealth as well as our nobility have for their origin an iniquitous and bloody conquest; these lands that to-day are ours and over which we lord it, once belonged to the Gauls who, from being free, were dispossessed, subjugated and reduced to a frightful condition of slavery by the Franks, our ancestors. Our present vassals are the descendants of that disinherited race which has been successively the slaves, serfs and vassals of our ancestors. Show yourself, accordingly, charitable, compassionate, equitable, fraternal, benevolent, obedient to the humane law of the Christian faith. Alas! however generous your conduct may be towards them, never could it expiate the wrongs to which our conquering race has subjected the Gallic generations for now more than ten centuries. To the end that you may know and entertain a just horror for so much iniquity and all the sufferings that it entailed, I shall subjoin to these pages several fragments of the history of a family of Gallic origin, the family of Lebrenn of Karnak—'"

"Niece!" cried the Marchioness indignantly, "I can no longer listen to such enormities!"

Abbot Boujaron's worried looks, the disorder into which his wig, his neckerchief and his cloak were thrown, threw the Marchioness of Tremblay into such alarm that, wholly forgetting the subject of her conversation with Mademoiselle Plouernel, she cried: "My God, Abbot, what has happened? You are all upset; you seem to be in great excitement; you look as if you had just come out of a scuffle."

"I have good reason to be uneasy, dear Marchioness. I have mislaid the letter that we wrote this morning to your nephew—the confidential letter that you know of."

"What!" replied the Marchioness visibly terrified. "Was not the letter put carefully folded in the pocket of your coat? I put it there myself. It can not have been mislaid."

"I was on my way to the house of the person whom, as we decided, I was to call upon in order to obtain some further information from him and add it to the letter, on which account it was left unsealed, when, crossing a large square, I was overtaken and soon found myself surrounded by a big crowd clamoring for the death of the De Witt brothers and the French."

"They are both of them men cast in the mold of Plutarch, to judge by what Monsieur Tilly, our host, was telling us of them yesterday," observed Mademoiselle Plouernel, emerging from the revery in which she was steeped since the arrival of the Abbot; "I could not tire of hearing him speak of the domestic virtues of the two brothers, whom he considers to be the greatest living citizens of Holland, and men of distinguished probity."

"My dear daughter," answered the Abbot, "our host belongs to the same political party as those De Witts; as such he has his reasons to give them a high place—in your estimation."

"But the letter," put in the Marchioness with increasing anxiety, "how comes it to be mislaid, perhaps lost?"

"I am distracted at the loss of that letter. It may fall into the hands of and be read by some indiscreet fellow—you understand me, Abbot?—that would be most disagreeable and compromising."

"I understand you but too well, Marchioness! Only too well! I therefore went twice over the road that I traveled, but all in vain; I could not find the letter! Most unfortunately it was unsealed. The most scrupulous man would have been justified to cast his eyes over it—and thus inform himself upon its contents."

"Truly, aunt," put in Mademoiselle Plouernel, "I fail to understand the deep anxiety that the loss of a letter, that seems to have been written to my brother in order to inform him of the delay in our arrival in England, can cause you and Monsieur the Abbot. The matter is a trifle; it can have no serious results; cease to fret about it."

"There are things, my niece, the wide bearings of which you can not understand," answered the Marchioness of Tremblay sententiously; "it is enough that you know that the loss of this letter is most regrettable."

At this moment the Marchioness's lackey entered the room after announcing himself with a rap at the door, and said to his mistress:

"Madam, there is a man who asks to see Monsieur the Abbot without delay on an important matter."

"Who is he?"

"He is a Frenchman, madam."

"Does he seem to be noble?"

"Marchioness," said the Abbot excitedly as if struck by a sudden thought, "it may be this individual found the letter, and is bringing it back to me. God be praised! our alarm will be at end! Oh, I hope it may be so!"

"But how could the stranger know your address?"

"Did I not write to Raoul that we were stopping with Monsieur Tilly?"

"In that case, Abbot," replied the Marchioness with an accent of extreme apprehension, "the stranger must have read the letter! We would have a stranger informed upon our plans! We must have light upon this, and quickly."

And addressing the lackey:

"Introduce the stranger immediately, and then withdraw."

"The more I think upon it," said Mademoiselle Plouernel to herself, astonished and pensive, "all the more unexplainable does my aunt's and the Abbot's uneasiness seem to me."

"Come, Bertha, let us withdraw to my chamber, and leave Monsieur the Abbot with monsieur."

Bertha of Plouernel was preparing to follow her aunt when, after having again contemplated the young maid, the stranger bowed once more to the Marchioness, and said:

"If Madam the Marchioness will allow, the interview that I desire to hold with her and with monsieur, Abbot Boujaron, will take place in the presence of Mademoiselle Plouernel. It is proper, it is even necessary that this should be."

"You know us, monsieur?" said the Marchioness, not a little astonished. "You know our names?"

"Excuse me, aunt, if I go and leave you with the gentlemen."

"Mademoiselle," said the stranger warmly, as he divined the maid's thoughts, "I conjure you, do not impute the obstinacy of my gaze to a disregard of the respect due you, and with which I am profoundly penetrated; I sought to read and I did read on your features the uprightness and nobility of your heart; I doubly congratulate myself on being able to render you a service, a great service."

"Me, monsieur?" answered Mademoiselle Plouernel in great astonishment, yet struck by the accent of unquestionable sincerity in the stranger's words. "What service can you render to me, me whom you do not know, and whom you now see for the first time? Be kind enough to explain yourself more clearly."

"Monsieur," said the Marchioness haughtily to the stranger, as he was about to answer Bertha, "you introduced yourself into this house under pretext of soliciting an interview, which Monsieur Abbot Boujaron has condescended to grant you. That notwithstanding, you have hitherto addressed mademoiselle only—a violation of propriety towards me and Monsieur the Abbot."

"Moreover, monsieur," added the Abbot, "we are wholly in the dark as to who you are. Your language is as strange as your visit."

A tremor ran over Bertha's frame; for an instant she remained dumb with stupefaction, while, scarlet with confusion and apprehension, both her aunt and the Abbot exchanged significant looks that betrayed their embarrassment. Struck speechless for an instant, Mademoiselle Plouernel turned to the stranger and asked:

"And why, monsieur, do you warn me against the journey to England?"

"For two reasons, mademoiselle, two important reasons—"

"Monsieur," the Abbot interrupted the stranger with, in an icy tone, "I wish to call your attention, first, to the fact that you have committed a breach of confidence; secondly, that you have not understood a word of the letter that you found and that you took the freedom of reading—an indiscretion that a man of good breeding would have carefully guarded against."

"Monsieur," broke in Bertha with profound feeling, as she yielded to a sudden and painful sense of danger that flashed through her mind. "I ask it as a favor of you, explain yourself clearly. Be good enough to give me your reasons for the advice."

"One moment, my dear child," the Abbot hastened to interpose, in order to parry off the stranger's answer; "I am the writer of that letter; it is for me to speak intelligently upon it. I can tell monsieur that the despatch which he read is addressed to an envoy of his Majesty Louis XIV at the court of his Majesty Charles II, and that it deals with very delicate affairs of state. Now, then, I must add, that unless one be the most reckless of men, which I certainly am not, one does not conduct a correspondence upon matters of such a nature, except in cipher, or by means of enigmatic phrases, that bear a double sense, both of which seem perfectly logical on their face, but the real purport of which remains secret between the correspondents themselves, who are alone able to interpret it. It will be well for monsieur to understand that."

"Monsieur, the reading of the letter is wholly superfluous, it being established that the letter no wise concerns mademoiselle."

"No doubt," replied the stranger, "mademoiselle is not touched upon in it except in an enigmatic and mysterious manner. Accordingly, when Monsieur the Abbot writes to Monsieur the Count of Plouernel: