“You have dropped the paper, sister, but you are not asleep,” said the old woman, slyly.

At this moment Mariotte came in to light the lamp, which she placed on a square table in front of the fire; then she fetched her distaff, her ball of thread, and a small stool, on which she seated herself in the recess of a window and began as usual to spin.  Gasselin was still busy about the offices; he looked to the horses of the baron and Calyste, saw that the stable was in order for the night, and gave the two fine hunting-dogs their daily meal.  The joyful barking of the animals was the last noise that awakened the echoes slumbering among the darksome walls of the ancient house.  The two dogs and the two horses were the only remaining vestiges of the splendors of its chivalry.  An imaginative man seated on the steps of the portico and letting himself fall into the poesy of the still living images of that dwelling, might have quivered as he heard the baying of the hounds and the trampling of the neighing horses.

Gasselin was one of those short, thick, squat little Bretons, with black hair and sun-browned faces, silent, slow, and obstinate as mules, but always following steadily the path marked out for them.  He was forty-two years old, and had been twenty-five years in the household.  Mademoiselle had hired him when he was fifteen, on hearing of the marriage and probable return of the baron.  This retainer considered himself as part of the family; he had played with Calyste, he loved the horses and dogs of the house, and talked to them and petted them as though they were his own.  He wore a blue linen jacket with little pockets flapping about his hips, waistcoat and trousers of the same material at all seasons, blue stockings, and stout hob-nailed shoes.  When it was cold or rainy he put on a goat’s-skin, after the fashion of his country.

Mariotte, who was also over forty, was as a woman what Gasselin was as a man.  No team could be better matched,—­same complexion, same figure, same little eyes that were lively and black.  It is difficult to understand why Gasselin and Mariotte had never married; possibly it might have seemed immoral, they were so like brother and sister.  Mariotte’s wages were ninety francs a year; Gasselin’s, three hundred.  But thousands of francs offered to them elsewhere would not have induced either to leave the Guenic household.  Both were under the orders of Mademoiselle, who, from the time of the war in La Vendee to the period of her brother’s return, had ruled the house.  When she learned that the baron was about to bring home a mistress, she had been moved to great emotion, believing that she must yield the sceptre of the household and abdicate in favor of the Baronne du Guenic, whose subject she was now compelled to be.