mamzelle fleurette had been confessing for many years to old father fochelle. in his secret heart he often thought it a waste of 277his time and her own that she should come with her little babblings, her little nothings to him, calling them sins. he felt that a wave of the hand might brush them away, and that it in a manner compromised the dignity of holy absolution to pronounce the act over so innocent a soul.
to-day she had whispered all her shortcomings into his ear through the grating of the confessional; he knew them so well! there were many other penitents waiting to be heard, and he was about to dismiss her with a hasty blessing when she arrested him, and in hesitating, faltering accents told him of her love for the locksmith, the husband of another woman. a slap in the face would not have startled father fochelle more forcibly or more painfully. what soul was there on earth, he wondered, so hedged about with innocence as to be secure from the machinations of satan! oh, the thunder of indignation that descended upon mamzelle fleurette’s head! she bowed down, beaten to earth beneath it. then came questions, one, two, three, in quick succession, that made mamzelle fleurette gasp and clutch blindly before her. why was 278she not a shadow, a vapor, that she might dissolve from before those angry, penetrating eyes; or a small insect, to creep into some crevice and there hide herself forevermore?
“oh, father! no, no, no!” she faltered, “he knows nothing, nothing. i would die a hundred deaths before he should know, before anyone should know, besides yourself and the good god of whom i implore pardon.”
father fochelle breathed more freely, and mopped his face with a flaming bandana, which he took from the ample pocket of his soutane. but he scolded mamzelle fleurette roundly, unpityingly; for being a fool, for being a sentimentalist. she had not committed mortal sin, but the occasion was ripe for it; and look to it she must that she keep satan at bay with watchfulness and prayer. “go, my child, and sin no more.”
mamzelle fleurette made a détour in regaining her home by which she would not have to pass the locksmith’s shop. she did not even look in that direction when she let herself in at the glass door of her store.
some time before, when she was yet ignorant of the motive which prompted the act, 279she had cut from a newspaper a likeness of lacodie, who had served as foreman of the jury during a prominent murder trial. the likeness happened to be good, and quite did justice to the locksmith’s fine physiognomy with its leonine hirsute adornment. this picture mamzelle fleurette had kept hitherto between the pages of her prayer book. here, twice a day, it looked out at her; as she turned the leaves of the holy mass in the morning, and when she read her evening devotions before her own little home altar, over which hung a crucifix and a picture of the empress eugénie.
her first action upon entering her room, even before she unpinned the dotted veil, was to take lacodie’s picture from her prayer book and place it at random between the leaves of a “dictionnaire de la langue francaise,” which was the undermost of a pile of old books that stood on the corner of the mantelpiece. between night and morning, when she would approach the holy sacrament, mamzelle fleurette felt it to be her duty to thrust lacodie from her thoughts by every means and device known to her.
280the following day was sunday, when there was no occasion or opportunity for her to see the locksmith. moreover, after partaking of holy communion, mamzelle fleurette felt invigorated; she was conscious of a new, if fictitious, strength to combat satan and his wiles.
on monday, as the hour approached for lacodie to appear, mamzelle fleurette became harassed by indecision. should she call in the young girl, the neighbor who relieved her on occasion, and deliver the store into the girl’s hands for an hour or so? this might be well enough for once in a while, but she could not conveniently resort to this subterfuge daily. after all, she had her living to make, which consideration was paramount. she finally decided that she would retire to her little back room and when she heard the store door open she would call out:
“is it you, monsieur lacodie? i am very busy; please take your paper and leave your cinq sous on the counter.” if it happened not to be lacodie she would come forward and serve the customer in person. she did not, of course, expect to carry out this performance 281each day; a fresh device would no doubt suggest itself for tomorrow. mamzelle fleurette proceeded to carry out her programme to the letter.
“is it you, monsieur lacodie?” she called out from the little back room, when the front door opened. “i am very busy; please take your paper—”
“ce n’est pas lacodie, mamzelle fleurette. c’est moi, augustine.”
it was lacodie’s wife, a fat, comely young woman, wearing a blue veil thrown carelessly over her kinky black hair, and carrying some grocery parcels clasped close in her arms. mamzelle fleurette emerged from the back room, a prey to the most contradictory emotions; relief and disappointment struggling for the mastery with her.
“no lacodie to-day, mamzelle fleurette,” augustine announced with a certain robust ill-humor; “he is there at home shaking with a chill till the very window panes rattle. he had one last friday” (the day he had not come for his paper) “and now another and a worse one to-day. god knows, if it keeps on-well, 282let me have the paper; he will want to read it to-night when his chill is past.”
mamzelle fleurette handed the paper to augustine, feeling like an old woman in a dream handing a newspaper to a young woman in a dream. she had never thought of lacodie having chills or being ill. it seemed very strange. and augustine was no sooner gone than all the ague remedies she had ever heard of came crowding to mamzelle fleurette’s mind; an egg in black coffee—or was it a lemon in black coffee? or an egg in vinegar? she rushed to the door to call augustine back, but the young woman was already far down the street.
