suspicions. The old men who were taking their walks abroad, remarked a
sort of concentrated activity about Madame de Dey's premises, shown by
the very precautions which the servants took to conceal it. The
foot-man was beating a carpet in the garden. The day before, no one
would have noticed that fact; but the carpet now became a corner-stone
on which the whole town built up its theories. Each individual had his
or her surmise.

The second day, on learning that Madame de Dey declared herself ill,
the principal personages of Carentan, assembled in the evening at the
house of the mayor's brother, an old married merchant, a man of strict
integrity, greatly respected, and for whom Madame de Dey had shown
much esteem. There all the aspirants for the hand of the rich widow
had a tale to tell that was more or less probable; and each expected
to turn to his own profit the secret event which he thus recounted.
The public prosecutor imagined a whole drama to result in the return
by night of Madame de Dey's son, the emigre. The mayor was convinced
that a priest who refused the oath had arrived from La Vendee and
asked for asylum; but the day being Friday, the purchase of a hare
embarrassed the good mayor not a little. The judge of the district
court held firmly to the theory of a Chouan leader or a body of
Vendeans hotly pursued. Others were convinced that the person thus
harbored was a noble escaped from the Paris prisons. In short, they
all suspected the countess of being guilty of one of those
generosities, which the laws of the day called crimes, and punished on
the scaffold. The public prosecutor remarked in a low voice that it
would be best to say no more, but to do their best to save the poor
woman from the abyss toward which she was hurrying.

"If you talk about this affair," he said, "I shall be obliged to take