"Accordingly, you love the monk! Yes, you love him passionately! The thought of him obsesses you. Your grief and the sorrow that day before yesterday you felt when he was carried wounded into the house, the tears I surprised in your eyes—all these are so many symptoms of your love for him!"
"Hervé, I know not why, but your words alarm me, they disconcert me, they freeze my heart, they make me feel like weeping. I did not feel that way this evening when I conversed with mother about Brother St. Ernest-Martyr. Besides, your face looks gloomy, almost enraged."
"I hate that monk to death!"
"My God! What has he done to you?"
"What has he done to me?" repeated Hervé. "You love him! That is his crime!"
"Brother!" cried Hena, rising from her work to throw herself on the neck of her brother and holding him in a tight embrace. "Utter not such words! You make me wretched!"
Convulsed with despair, Hervé pressed his sister passionately to his breast and covered her forehead and hair with kisses, while Hena, innocently responding to his caresses, whispered with gentle emotion:
"Good brother, you are no longer angry, are you? If you only knew my alarm at seeing you look so wicked!"
A heavy knock resounded at the street door, followed immediately by the sonorous and merry voice of the Franc-Taupin singing his favorite song:
| "A Franc-Taupin had an ash-tree bow, |
| All eaten with worms, and all knotted its cord; |
| Derideron, vignette on vignon!! Derideron!" |