often goes there; in your absence the house is less pleasant for
him. He'll be glad to see you again. But say, my Jacques, are you
satisfied with your new position? I regretted letting you go with
that nobleman; I even accused myself in confession to the third
vicar of giving preference to your bodily well-being over that of
your soul and not having thought of God in establishing you. The
third vicar reproved me kindly over it, and exhorted me to follow
the example of the pious women in the Scriptures, of whom he named
several to me; but there are names there that I'll never be able to
remember. He did not explain his meaning minutely as it was a
Saturday evening and the church was full of penitents."

I reassured my good mother as well as I could and told her that M.
d'Asterac made me work in Greek, which was the language in which the
New Testament was written; this pleased her, but she remained
pensive.

"You'll never guess, my dear Jacquot," she said, "who spoke to me of
M. d'Asterac. It was Cadette Saint-Avit, the serving-woman of the
Rector of St Benoit. She comes from Gascony, and is a native of a
village called Laroque-Timbaut, quite near Saint Eulalie, of which
M. d'Asterac is the lord. You know that Cadette Saint-Avit is
elderly, as the waiting-woman of a rector ought to be. In her youth
she knew, in her country, the three Messieurs d'Asterac, one of whom
was captain of a man-of-war and has since been drowned. He was the
youngest. The second was colonel of a regiment, went to war and was
killed. The eldest, Hercules d'Asterac, is the sole survivor of the
three brothers. It is the same one in whose service you are for your
good, at least I hope so. He dressed magnificently in his youth, was
liberal in his manners but of a sombre humour. He kept aloof from