Nanon, with a sharp cry, walked up to the superior, and, raising the hood which shaded the nun's dull eyes, recognized her rival.
"'T is she!" murmured Nanon. "And she was so lovely when she came to Saint-Georges! Poor woman!"
She stepped back, with her eyes still fixed on the viscountess, and shaking her head.
"Oh!" cried the viscountess with a touch of the pride that all men feel to know that their capacity for suffering is greater than their fellows'; "it is kind of you to say that, and it has done me good. I must have suffered cruelly to have undergone so cruel a change; I must have wept bitterly; I am more unhappy than you, therefore, for you are lovely still."
And the viscountess raised her eyes, beaming with the first ray of joy that had shone in them for a month past, as if seeking Canolles in the sky above her head.
Nanon, still on her knees, hid her face in her hands and burst into tears.
"Alas! madame," said she, "I did not know to whom my petition was addressed; for the last month I have known nothing of what was taking place, and that ignorance has preserved my beauty; beyond all question I have been mad. Now I am at your command. I have no desire to make you jealous of the dead. I ask to be admitted here as the humblest of your nuns; you can do with me as you please, and if I disobey you can subject me to the severest discipline,—you have the dungeon and the impace. But," she added in a trembling voice, "you will at least let me from time to time see the place where the man we both loved so dearly is buried?"
She fell, sobbing and almost unconscious, upon the turf.
The viscountess made no reply; leaning against the trunk of a sycamore, she seemed ready to expire at her side.
"Oh! madame," cried Nanon, "you do not answer; you refuse! Be it so; I have a single treasure in my possession, and you perhaps have nothing that was his; grant my request and that treasure is yours."