The Italian Pedlar

This caitiff monk for gold did swear,
That by his drugs my rival fair
     A saint in heaven should be.--SCOTT


A grand cavalcade bore the house of Quinet from Montauban--coaches,
wagons, outriders, gendarmes--it was a perfect court progress, and
so low and cumbrous that it was a whole week in reaching a grand
old castle standing on a hill-side among chestnut woods, with an
avenue a mile long leading up to it; and battlemented towers fit to
stand a siege.

Eustacie was ranked among the Duchess's gentlewomen.  She was so
far acknowledged as a lady of birth, that she was usually called
Madame Esperance; and though no one was supposed to doubt her being
Theodore Gardon's widow, she was regarded as being a person of rank
who had made a misalliance by marrying him.  This Madame de Quinet
had allowed the household to infer, thinking that the whole bearing
of her guest was too unlike that of a Paris bourgeoise not to
excite suspicion, but she deemed it wiser to refrain from treating
her with either intimacy or distinction that might excite jealousy
or suspicion. 

Even as it was, the consciousness of a secret, or
the remnants of Montauban gossip, prevented any familiarity between
Eustacie and the good ladies who surrounded her; they were very
civil to each other, but their only connecting link was the delight
that every one took in petting pretty little Rayonette, and the
wonder that was made of her signs of intelligence and attempts at
talking.  E