"Have you seen Alice?" I broke our silence with at length.
He shook his head wearily. "I could not," he replied, "I know the bitterness she must feel toward me."
At that moment Marie knocked at the door. As she entered, I saw that her wrinkled face was drawn, as with lowered eyes she regarded a yellow envelope stamped with the seal of the République Française.
With a trembling hand she laid it beside the curé, and left the room.
The curé started, then he rose nervously to his feet, steadying himself against the table's edge as he tore open the envelope, and glanced at its contents. With a low moan he sank back in his chair.—"Go," he pleaded huskily, "I wish to be alone—I have been summoned before the mayor."
Never before in the history of the whole country about, had a curé been hauled to account. Pont du Sable was buzzing like a beehive over the affair. Along its single thoroughfare, flanked by the stone houses of the fishermen, the gossips clustered in groups. From what I caught in passing proved to me again that his reverence had more friends than enemies.
It was in the mayor's kitchen, which serves him as executive chamber as well, that the official investigation took place.
With the exception of the Municipal Council, consisting of the baker, the butcher, the grocer, and two raisers of cattle, none were to be admitted at the mayor's save Tanrade, myself and Alice de Bréville, whose presence the mayor had judged imperative, and who had been summoned from Paris.
Tanrade and I had arrived early—the mayor greeting us at the gate of his trim little garden, and ushering us to our chairs in the clean, well-worn kitchen, with as much solemnity as if there had been a death in the house. Here we sat, under the low ceiling of rough beams and waited in a funereal silence, broken only by the slow ticking of the tall clock in the corner. It was working as hard as it could, its brass pendulum swinging lazily toward three o'clock, the hour appointed for the investigation.