“Monsieur,” answered the student, “for whatever you may observe in me that is better than the commonplace, she is responsible.”
“It shall go to her credit some day, be assured. And now, what is this other matter? It is not only the fall of its idol, the discovery of monseigneur’s baseness, that has sobered the community of Méricourt?”
“By no means.”
The student pulled at his pipe vehemently. Coaxing it from the sulking mood, his expression relaxed, and he breathed forth jets of smoke that he dissipated with his hand.
“By no means,” said he. “The moral debility that ensued, however, may have rendered us (I will not say it did) peculiarly susceptible to the complaint of godliness. At any rate, monsieur, we were chosen for a high honour, and——”
He paused, sighed, and shook his head pathetically.
“It is true, then, that the virgin revealed herself to the lodge-keeper?” said Ned. And he added: “Boppard, my Boppard! I believe you are not, in spite of all, weaned from the fleshpots!”
The student smiled foolishly and a little anxiously.
“Let me tell you how it began, monsieur,” said he. “The bitter scandal of monseigneur and—and of our poor demoiselle was yet hot in women’s mouths (ah, monsieur, what secret gratification will it not give them, that fall of an envied sister!), when an interest of a different kind withdrew these cankers from feeding on their rose. Baptiste, the little brother of Nicette Legrand, disappeared, and has never been heard of since.”
“The child! But, who——?”