Pierre's existence; and he began to try to make friends with the lad.
Pierre was too sharp and shrewd not to suspect something from the
confused attempts at friendliness. It was not for nothing that the
Norman farmer lounged in the court and doorway, and brought home presents
of galette. Pierre accepted the galette, reciprocated the civil
speeches, but kept his eyes open. Once, returning home pretty late at
night, he surprised the Norman studying the shadows on the blind, which
was drawn down when Madame Babette's lamp was lighted. On going in, he
found Mademoiselle Cannes with his mother, sitting by the table, and
helping in the family mending.

"Pierre was afraid that the Norman had some view upon the money which his
mother, as concierge, collected for her brother. But the money was all
safe next evening, when his cousin, Monsieur Morin Fils, came to collect
it. Madame Babette asked her nephew to sit down, and skilfully barred
the passage to the inner door, so that Virginie, had she been ever so
much disposed, could not have retreated. She sat silently sewing. All
at once the little party were startled by a very sweet tenor voice, just
close to the street window, singing one of the airs out of Beaumarchais'
operas, which, a few years before, had been popular all over Paris. But
after a few moments of silence, and one or two remarks, the talking went
on again. Pierre, however, noticed an increased air of abstraction in
Virginie, who, I suppose, was recurring to the last time that she had
heard the song, and did not consider, as her cousin had hoped she would
have done, what were the words set to the air, which he imagined she
would remember, and which would have told her so much. For, only a few
years before, Adam's opera of Richard le Roi had made the story of the
minstrel Blondel and our English Coeur de Lion familiar to all the opera-
going part of the Parisian public, and Clement had bethought him of
establishing a communication with Virginie by some such means.