Her tears flowed fast, and she added: “I
shall be proud of that all the rest of my life!
If only you, too, would forgive me.”
The heart of Giselle was melted by these words.
“Forgive you, my dear little girl? Ah!
you have been better than I. I forgot our old friendship
for a moment—I was harsh to you; and I have
so little right to blame you! But come!
Providence may have arranged all for the best, though
one of us may have to suffer. Pray for that some
one. Good-by—’au revoir!”
She kissed Jacqueline’s forehead and was gone,
before her cousin had seized the meaning of her last
words. But joy and peace came back to Jacqueline.
She had recovered her best friend, and had convinced
her of her innocence.
GENTLE CONSPIRATORS
Before Giselle went home to her own house she called
on the Abbe Bardin, whom a rather surly servant was
not disposed to disturb, as he was just eating his
breakfast. The Abbe Bardin was Jacqueline’s
confessor, and he held the same relation to a number
of other young girls who were among her particular
friends. He was thoroughly acquainted with all
that concerned their delicate and generally childish
little souls. He kept them in the right way,
had often a share in their marriages, and in general
kept an eye upon them all their lives. Even when
they escaped from him, as had happened in the case
of Jacqueline, he did not give them up. He commended
them to God, and looked forward to the time of their
repentance with the patience of a father. The
Abbe Bardin had never been willing to exercise any
function but that of catechist; he had grown old in
the humble rank of third assistant in a great parish,
when, with a little ambition, he might have been its
rector. “Suffer little children to come
unto me,” had been his motto. These words
of his Divine Master seemed more often than any others
on his lips-lips so expressive of loving kindness,
though sometimes a shrewd smile would pass over them
and seem to say: “I know, I can divine.”
But when this smile, the result of long experience,
did not light up his features, the good Abbe Bardin
looked like an elderly child; he was short, his walk
was a trot, his face was round and ruddy, his eyes,
which were short-sighted, were large, wide-open, and
blue, and his heavy crop of white hair, which curled
and crinkled above his forehead, made him look like
a sixty-year-old angel, crowned with a silvery aureole.
Rubbing his hands affably, he came into the little
parlor where Madame de Talbrun was waiting for him.
There was probably no ecclesiastic in all Paris who
had a salon so full of worked cushions, each of which
was a keepsake—a souvenir of some first
communion. The Abbe did not know his visitor,
but the name Talbrun seemed to him connected with an
honorable and well-meaning family. The lady was
probably a mother who had come to put her child into
