She knows something, but it is impossible to make her talk.' "After chatting with me for a few minutes, my hostess left me a prey
to vague and sinister thoughts, to romantic curiosity, and a religious
dread, not unlike the deep emotion which comes upon us when we go into a
dark church at night and discern a feeble light glimmering under a lofty
vault--a dim figure glides across--the sweep of a gown or of a priest's
cassock is audible--and we shiver! La Grande Breteche, with its rank
grasses, its shuttered windows, its rusty iron-work, its locked doors,
its deserted rooms, suddenly rose before me in fantastic vividness. I
tried to get into the mysterious dwelling to search out the heart of
this solemn story, this drama which had killed three persons. "Rosalie became in my eyes the most interesting being in Vendome. As
I studied her, I detected signs of an inmost thought, in spite of the
blooming health that glowed in her dimpled face. There was in her soul
some element of ruth or of hope; her manner suggested a secret, like
the expression of devout souls who pray in excess, or of a girl who has
killed her child and for ever hears its last cry. Nevertheless, she was
simple and clumsy in her ways; her vacant smile had nothing criminal
in it, and you would have pronounced her innocent only from seeing the
large red and blue checked kerchief that covered her stalwart bust,
tucked into the tight-laced bodice of a lilac- and white-striped gown. 'No,' said I to myself, 'I will not quit Vendome without knowing the
whole history of la Grande Breteche. To achieve this end, I will make
love to Rosalie if it proves necessary.' "'Rosalie!' said I one evening. "'Your servant, sir?' "'You are not married?' She started a little. "'Oh! there is no lack of men if ever I take a fancy to be miserable!' she replied, laughing. She got over her agitation at once; for every
woman, from the highest lady to the inn-servant inclusive, has a native
presence of mind. "'Yes; you are fresh and good-looking enough never to lack lovers! But
tell me, Rosalie, why did you become an inn-servant on leaving Madame de
Merret? Did she not leave you some little annuity?' "'Oh yes, sir. But my place here is the best in all the town of
Vendome.' "This reply was such an one as judges and attorneys call evasive. Rosalie, as it seemed to me, held in this romantic affair the place of
the middle square of the chess-board: she was at the very centre of the
interest and of the truth; she appeared to me to be tied into the knot
of it. It was not a case for ordinary love-making; this girl contained
the last chapter of a romance, and from that moment all my attentions
were devoted to Rosalie. By dint of studying the girl, I observed in
her, as in every woman whom we make our ruling thought, a variety of
good qualities; she was clean and neat; she was handsome, I need not
say; she soon was possessed of every charm that desire can lend to a
woman in whatever rank of life. A fortnight after the notary's visit,
one evening, or rather one morning, in the small hours, I said to
Rosalie:

"'Come, tell me all you know about Madame de Merret.' "'Oh!' she said, 'I will tell you; but keep the secret carefully.' "'All right, my child; I will keep all your secrets with a thief's
honor, which is the most loyal known.' "'If it is all the same to you,' said she, 'I would rather it should be
with your own.' "Thereupon she set her head-kerchief straight, and settled herself to
tell the tale; for there is no doubt a particular attitude of confidence
and security is necessary to the telling of a narrative. The best tales
are told at a certain hour--just as we are all here at table. No one
ever told a story well standing up, or fasting. "If I were to reproduce exactly Rosalie's diffuse eloquence, a whole
volume would scarcely contain it. Now, as the event of which she gave me
a confused account stands exactly midway between the notary's gossip and
that of Madame Lepas, as precisely as the middle term of a rule-of-three
sum stands between the first and third, I have only to relate it in as
few words as may be. I shall therefore be brief. "The room at la Grande Breteche in which Madame de Merret slept was on
the ground floor; a little cupboard in the wall, about four feet deep,
served her to hang her dresses in. Three months before the evening of
which I have to relate the events, Madame de Merret had been seriously
ailing, so much so that her husband had left her to herself, and had his
own bedroom on the first floor. By one of those accidents which it is
impossible to foresee, he came in that evening two hours later than
usual from the club, where he went to read the papers and talk politics
with the residents in the neighborhood. His wife supposed him to have
come in, to be in bed and asleep. But the invasion of France had been
the subject of a very animated discussion; the game of billiards had
waxed vehement; he had lost forty francs, an enormous sum at Vendome,
where everybody is thrifty, and where social habits are restrained
within the bounds of a simplicity worthy of all praise, and the
foundation perhaps of a form of true happiness which no Parisian would
care for. "For some time past Monsieur de Merret had been satisfied to ask Rosalie
whether his wife was in bed; on the girl's replying always in the
affirmative, he at once went to his own room, with the good faith that
comes of habit and confidence. But this evening, on coming in, he took
it into his head to go to see Madame de Merret, to tell her of his
ill-luck, and perhaps to find consolation. During dinner he had observed
that his wife was very becomingly dressed; he reflected as he came
home from the club that his wife was certainly much better, that
convalescence had improved her beauty, discovering it, as husbands
discover everything, a little too late. Instead of calling Rosalie,
who was in the kitchen at the moment watching the cook and the coachman
playing a puzzling hand at cards, Monsieur de Merret made his way to his
wife's room by the light of his lantern, which he set down at the lowest
step of the stairs. His step, easy to recognize, rang under the vaulted
passage. "At the instant when the gentleman turned the key to enter his wife's
room, he fancied he heard the door shut of the closet of which I have
spoken; but when he went in, Madame de Merret was alone, standing in
front of the fireplace. The unsuspecting husband fancied that Rosalie
was in the cupboard; nevertheless, a doubt, ringing in his ears like a
peal of bells, put him on his guard; he looked at his wife, and read in
her eyes an indescribably anxious and haunted expression. "'You are very late,' said she.--Her voice, usually so clear and sweet,
struck him as being slightly husky. "Monsieur de Merret made no reply, for at this moment Rosalie came in. This was like a thunder-clap. He walked up and down the room, going from
one window to another at a regular pace, his arms folded.