Canolles hastily opened it and read:—
"To-morrow, about six in the evening, be at the Carmelite Church, alone, and go to the first confessional on the left as you enter. You will find the door open."
"Well, that's an original idea," said Canolles.
There was a postscript.
"Do not boast," it said, "of having been where you were yesterday and to-day. Bordeaux is not a royalist city, remember, and the fate Monsieur l'Avocat-général would have suffered but for you should make you reflect."
"Good!" said Canolles, "she is jealous. And so, whatever she may say, I did very well to go to Monsieur Lavie's yesterday and to-day."
XI.
It must be said that since his arrival at Bordeaux, Canolles had undergone all the torture of unrequited love. He had seen the viscountess courted and caressed and flattered, while he himself was forbidden to devote himself to her, and had to take what comfort he could in an occasional glance bestowed upon him by Claire when the gossips were looking the other way. After the scene in the underground passage, after the passionate words they had exchanged at that critical moment, the existing state of things seemed to him to denote something worse than lukewarmness on her part. But, as he felt sure that beneath her cold exterior she concealed a real and deep affection for him, he looked upon himself as the most to be pitied of all happy lovers that ever lived. His frame of mind is easily understood. By virtue of the promise he had been made to give, that he would carry on no correspondence with the outside world, he had relegated Nanon to that little corner of the conscience which is set aside for the accommodation of that variety of remorse. As he heard nothing of her, and consequently was spared the ennui caused by tangible reminders of the woman to whom one is unfaithful, his remorse was not altogether unbearable.
And yet, sometimes, just when the most jovial of smiles overspread the young man's features, when his voice was heard giving utterance to some bright and witty remark, a cloud would suddenly pass across his brow, and a sigh would escape from his lips at least, if not from his heart. The sigh was for Nanon; the cloud was the memory of the past casting its shadow over the present.