One very stormy night the wind blew in sharp, fierce gusts against the front windows, and the rain pattered hard. The streets were almost deserted, and utterly unlighted, as they were in those times, they offered no pleasant promenade on such a night as that. Suddenly the bell rang, as I was sitting by Father Bonneville reading, when Mariette was sound asleep up stairs, and Jeanette was working away in her kitchen.
“Who can that be?” said Father Bonneville, turning a little pale. “Stay, Jeanette, stay for a moment;” and he put away one or two things that were lying about, and locked the door of the little cabinet.
Now, it might seem a cruelty to keep any one waiting at the door even for a minute or two in the pitiless pelting of the shower; but I forgot to mention in describing the house, that it, and a neighboring house, which bent away from the main into a side street, formed a very obtuse angle, and that between the two there was a little arched entrance overshadowing a flight of steps which led to the good Father’s door. Thus, any visitor was as much sheltered from the rain on the outside, as if he had been in the house itself.
Jeanette had, at length, permission to go to the door, and to tell the truth, both Father Bonneville and I peeped out to see who was the applicant who made so late a call.
“I wish to see Father Bonneville,” said a woman’s voice, marvelously sweet and pleasant.
“Is your business very pressing, madam?” asked Jeanette, adding, “it is late, and just the good Father’s time for going to bed.”
“Life and death!” said the visitor. “I must see him, and see him alone.”
“Well, madam, come in,” was the reply, and at the same moment Father Bonneville said in a low tone, but it seemed to me with a happy air, “Leave me, François. Go to bed, my son.”
I obeyed at once, and in moving across the passage to the kitchen for a light, I crossed the visitor, nearly touching her. All I could see, however, was that she was tall, dignified in carriage, dressed in deep black, and wrapped up in a large mantle with a veil over her head.
I felt sure that it was Mariette’s mother, and hurrying away to my new room, which was over the little archway sheltering the entrance, I shut the door and gave myself up to a fit of despair. I fancied that she had come to take my little pet away, to separate her from me forever, to deprive me of my property, and I cannot describe in any degree what I felt. The anguish of that moment was as great almost as I ever experienced in life. All I did within the next ten minutes I cannot tell, but one thing I know I did, which was to sit down and cry like a great baby. I would have given worlds to have known what was passing; but I did not listen though I might have done so easily from the top of my little stairs. But good Father Bonneville had so early, so well, and so strongly impressed upon my mind the duty of avoiding any meanness, that eaves-dropping seemed to me in those days almost as great a crime as murder. Indeed it was in somewhat of that shape that the good Father placed it before my eyes. “What right,” he said, “has one man to rob another of his secrets any more than of his money? They are both his property, and if they are not given they are stolen.”