“The same thing happened?”
“Yes, and the next also. And that went
on for three weeks without any explanation, without
anything explaining that strange conduct to me, the
secret of which I suspected, however.”
“They knew everything?”
“I should think so, by George. But how?
Ah! I had a great deal of anxiety before I found
it out.”
“How did you manage it at last?”
“From their letters, for on the same day they
both gave me their dismissal in identical terms.”
“Well?”
“This is how it was.... You know that women
always have an array of pins about them. I know
hairpins, I doubt them, and look after them, but the
others are much more treacherous; those confounded
little black-headed pins which look all alike to us,
great fools that we are, but which they can distinguish,
just as we can distinguish a horse from a dog.
“Well, it appears that one day my minister’s
little wife left one of those tell-tale instruments
pinned to the paper, close to my looking-glass.
My usual one had immediately seen this little black
speck, no bigger than a flea, and had taken it out
without saying a word, and then had left one of her
pins, which was also black, but of a different pattern,
in the same place.
“The next day, the minister’s wife wished
to recover her property, and immediately recognized
the substitution. Then her suspicions were aroused,
and she put in two and crossed them, and my original
one replied to this telegraphic signal by three black
pellets, one on the top of the other, and as soon
as this method had begun, they continued to communicate
with one another, without saying a word, only to spy
on each other. Then it appears that the regular
one, being bolder, wrapped a tiny piece of paper round
the little wire point, and wrote upon it: C.
D., Poste Restante, Boulevards, Malherbes.
“Then they wrote to each other. You understand
that was not everything that passed between them.
They set to work with precaution, with a thousand
stratagems, with all the prudence that is necessary
in such cases, but the regular one did a bold stroke,
and made an appointment with the other. I do
not know what they said to each other; all that I
know is, that I had to pay the costs of their interview.
There you have it all!”
“Is that all?”
“Yes.”
“And you do not see them any more?”
“I beg your pardon. I see them as friends,
for we have not quarreled altogether.”
“And have they met again?”
“Yes, my dear fellow, they have become intimate
friends.”
“And has not that given you an idea?”
“No, what idea?”
“You great booby! The idea of making them
put back the pins where they found them.”
As he was a man of quiet and regular habits, and of
a simple and affectionate disposition, and had nothing
to disturb the even tenor of his life, Monsieur de
Loubancourt suffered more than most men do from his
widowerhood. He regretted his lost happiness,
was angry with fate, which separated united couples
so brutally, and which made choice of a tranquil existence,
whose sleepy quietude had not hitherto been troubled
by any cares or chimeras, in order to rob it of its
happiness.
