She plucked a paper from her apron pocket and thrust it into his hand. He read it, and blinked in amazement.
“Where did you get this, Mère Bidoux?”
“Where I got many more. In your drawer. The letters you were saving for this infamous scoundrel. I wanted to know what she had written to him.”
“Mère Bidoux!” cried Aristide. “Those letters were sacred!”
“Bah!” said Mme. Bidoux, unabashed. “There is nothing sacred to a sapper or an old grandmother who loves an imbecile. I have read the letters, et voilà, et voilà, et voilà!” And she emptied her pockets of all the letters, minus the envelopes, that Fleurette had written.
And, after one swift glance at the first letter, Aristide had no compunction in reading. They were all addressed to himself.
They were very short, ill-written in a poor little uncultivated hand. But they all contained one message, that of her love for Aristide. Whatever illusions she may have had concerning Batterby had soon vanished. She knew, with the unerring instinct of woman, that he had betrayed and deserted her. Aristide’s pious fraud had never deceived her for a second. Too gentle, too timid to let him know what was in her heart, she had written the secret patiently week after week, hoping every time that curiosity, or pity, or something—she knew not what—would induce him to open the idle letter, and wondering in her simple peasant’s soul at the delicacy that caused him to refrain. Once she had boldly given him the envelope unclosed.
he read it, and blinked in amazement
“She died for want of love, parbleu,” said Aristide, “and there was mine quivering in my heart and trembling on my lips all the time.... She had des yeux de pervenche. Ah! nom d’un chien! It is only with me that Providence plays such tricks.”