Unawares: A Story of an Old French Town

“Quaint old town of toil and traffic.” Longfellow.
“You might tell us something, Madame Angelin, since you know so much!”
“Yes, indeed. What is the good of knowing if you keep it to yourself?” cried a younger woman, impatiently, placing, as she spoke, her basket of herbs and vegetables upon the broad stone edge of the fountain around which a little group had gathered.
“Was it a fit?”
“Has Monsieur Deshoulières gone to him?”
“Is he dead?”
“What becomes of her?”
“Holy Virgin! will the town have to bury him?”
The individual upon whom this volley of shrill questions was directed was a small, thin, pungent-faced Frenchwoman, who had just filled her pitcher at the fountain, and stood with hands clasped over her waist, and with ineffable satisfaction in her twinkling black eyes, looking upon the excited questioners who crowded round her. It is not given to everybody to know more than their neighbours, nor, as Veuve Angelin shrewdly reflected, is it a privilege to be lightly parted with. There was something very enchanting in the eager attention with which her information was awaited, and she looked round upon them all with a patronising benignity, which was, to say the least, irritating. The May sun was shining brightly over old pointed roofs; the tiny streams running out of three grim carved heads in the stone fountain danced and sparkled in its light; the horse-chestnuts stiffly standing round the little “Place” threw deep shadows on the glaring stones; from one side sounded the soft wash of an unseen river; old, dilapidated houses were jumbled together, irrespective of height and size; behind the women, the town with its clustering houses rose abruptly on the side of a steep hill, crowned by the lovely spires of the Cathedral; and before them, only hidden from sight by the buildings of a straggling suburb, stretched the monotonous plains and sunny cornfields of the granary of France.
Veuve Angelin smiled indulgently and shook her head. “You young people think too much of gossip,” she said.