“If you have hesitated to ask me so simple a thing, monsieur,” replied the marquise, “and if you have taken such precautions to compel me to listen to you, it must, no doubt, be because you knew beforehand that the words you had to say to me were such as I could not hear.  Have the goodness, therefore, to reflect, before you open this conversation, that here as elsewhere I reserve the right—­and I warn you of it—­to interrupt what you may say at the moment when it may cease to seem to me befitting.”

“As to that, madame,” said the abbe, “I think I can answer for it that whatever it may please me to say to you, you will hear to the end; but indeed the matters are so simple that there is no need to make you uneasy beforehand:  I wished to ask you, madame, whether you have perceived a change in the conduct of your husband towards you.”

“Yes, monsieur,” replied the marquise, “and no single day has passed in which I have not thanked Heaven for this happiness.”

“And you have been wrong, madame,” returned the abbe, with one of those smiles that were peculiar to himself; “Heaven has nothing to do with it.  Thank Heaven for having made you the most beautiful and charming of women, and that will be enough thanksgiving without despoiling me of such as belong to my share.”

“I do not understand you, monsieur,” said the marquise in an icy tone.

“Well, I will make myself comprehensible, my dear sister-in-law.  I am the worker of the miracle for which you are thanking Heaven; to me therefore belongs your gratitude.  Heaven is rich enough not to rob the poor.”

“You are right, monsieur:  if it is really to you that I owe this return, the cause of which I did not know, I will thank you in the first place; and then afterwards I will thank Heaven for having inspired you with this good thought.”

“Yes,” answered the abbe, “but Heaven, which has inspired me with a good thought, may equally well inspire me with a bad one, if the good thought does not bring me what I expect from it.”

“What do you mean, monsieur?”

“That there has never been more than one will in the family, and that will is mine; that the minds of my two brothers turn according to the fancy of that will like weathercocks before the wind, and that he who has blown hot can blow cold.”

“I am still waiting for you to explain yourself, monsieur.”

“Well, then, my dear sister-in-law, since you are pleased not to understand me, I will explain myself more clearly.  My brother turned from you through jealousy; I wished to give you an idea of my power over him, and from extreme indifference I have brought him back, by showing him that he suspected you wrongly, to the ardours of the warmest love.  Well, I need only tell him that I was mistaken, and fix his wandering suspicions upon any man whatever, and I shall take him away from you, even as I have brought him back.  I need give you no proof of what I say; you know perfectly well that I am speaking the truth.”