"Ah! Madame, why did you not keep Jean Oullier near you?" said the widow. "There's an honest man, and a faithful one."
"I had orders to send to the château de Souday. He is to come back this evening with horses so that we may leave your house as soon as possible, for I know we increase your sorrow and add to your cares."
The widow did not answer. With her face hidden in her hands, she was weeping.
"Poor woman!" murmured the duchess; "your tears fall drop by drop upon my heart, where each leaves a painful furrow. Alas! this is the terrible, the inevitable result of revolutions. It is on the head of those who make them that the curse of all this blood and all these tears must fall."
"May it not rather fall, if God is just, on the heads of those who cause them?" said the widow, in a deep and muffled voice, which made her hearer quiver.
"Do you hate us so bitterly?" asked the latter, sadly.
"Yes, I hate you," said the widow. "How can you expect me to love you?"
"Alas! I understand; yes, your husband's death--"
"No, you do not understand," said Marianne, shaking her head.
The younger woman made a sign as if to say, "Explain yourself."