"This morning when I found that she didn't come down—Holy Virgin help us!"
"To the devil with your litanies!" cried Messire d'Estourville. "Say what you have to say simply and without all these jeremiads. This morning?"
"Ah! Monsieur le Prévôt, you can't prevent my weeping until she is found. This morning, messire, being alarmed at not seeing her (she is always so early!) I knocked at her door to wake her, and, as she did not answer, I opened the door. No one. The bed was not even rumpled, messire. With that I called and cried, and lost my head, and you want me not to weep!"
"Dame Perrine," said the provost sternly; "have you admitted any one here during my absence?"
"I admit any one! the idea!" rejoined the governess with every indication of stupefaction, feeling a little conscience-stricken in that regard. "Didn't you forbid me, messire? Since when, pray, have I allowed myself to disobey your orders? Admit some one? Oh yes, of course!"
"This Benvenuto, for instance, who had the assurance to deem my daughter so fair; has he never tried to buy you?"
"Good lack! he would have been more likely to try to fly to the moon. I would have received him prettily, I promise you."
"I am to understand, then, that you have never admitted a man, a young man, to the Petit-Nesle?"
"A young man! Merciful Heaven! a young man! Why not the devil himself?"
"Pray who is the handsome boy," said Pulchérie, "who has knocked at the door at least ten times since I have been here, and in whose face I have shut the door as often?"