somewhere along the road."

Just then a woman dressed in her Sunday clothes,--for the bells were
pealing from the clock tower and calling the inhabitants to mass,--a
woman about thirty-six years of age came up to the post master.

"Well, cousin," she said, "you wouldn't believe me-- Uncle is with
Ursula in the Grand'Rue, and they are going to mass."

In spite of the modern poetic canons as to local color, it is quite
impossible to push realism so far as to repeat the horrible blasphemy
mingled with oaths which this news, apparently so unexciting, brought
from the huge mouth of Minoret-Levrault; his shrill voice grew
sibilant, and his face took on the appearance of what people oddly
enough call a sunstroke.

"Is that true?" he asked, after the first explosion of his wrath was
over.

The postilions bowed to their master as they and their horses passed
him, but he seemed to neither see nor hear them. Instead of waiting
for his son, Minoret-Levrault hurried up to the Grand'Rue with his
cousin.

"Didn't I always tell you so?" she resumed. "When Doctor Minoret goes
out of his head that demure little hypocrite will drag him into
religion; whoever lays hold of the mind gets hold of the purse, and
she'll have our inheritance."

"But, Madame Massin--" said the post master, dumbfounded.