"If your suspicions have no other foundation," said Latournelle to
Madame Mignon, "I pity your susceptibilities."
"When a Breton girl sings," said Dumay gloomily, "the lover is not far
off."
"I will let you hear Modeste when she is improvising," said the
mother, "and you shall judge for yourselves--"
"Poor girl!" said Madame Dumay, "If she only knew our anxiety she
would be deeply distressed; she would tell us the truth,--especially
if she thought it would save Dumay."
"My friends, I will question my daughter to-morrow," said Madame
Mignon; "perhaps I shall obtain more by tenderness than you have
discovered by trickery."
Was the comedy of the "Fille mal Gardee" being played here,--as it is
everywhere and forever,--under the noses of these faithful spies,
these honest Bartholos, these Pyrenean hounds, without their being
able to ferret out, detect, nor even surmise the lover, the love-
affair, or the smoke of the fire? At any rate it was certainly not the
result of a struggle between the jailers and the prisoner, between the
despotism of a dungeon and the liberty of a victim,--it was simply the
never-ending repetition of the first scene played by man when the
curtain of the Creation rose; it was Eve in Paradise.
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