This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
A CHAMBERMAID'S DIARY.
441

"We shall have to wait," declared the prosecuting attorney, mysteriously, as he left that night. "Perhaps the Paris police will put us on the track of the guilty."

During this fatiguing day, amid the goings and comings, I had scarcely the leisure to think of the consequences of this drama, which for the first time put a little animation and life into this dismal Priory. Madame did not give us a minute's rest; we had to run hither and thither,—without reason, moreover, for Madame had lost her head a little. As for Marianne, she seemed to take no notice of anything, and to be unaware that anything had happened to upset the house. Like the sad Eugénie, she followed her own idea, and her own idea was very far from our preoccupations. When Monsieur appeared in the kitchen, she became suddenly like one intoxicated, and she looked at him with ecstatic eyes.

"Oh! your big phiz! Your big hands! Your big eyes!"

In the evening, after a silent dinner, I had an opportunity to reflect. The idea had struck me immediately, and now it was fortified within me, that Joseph was not a stranger to this bold robbery. I even went so far as to hope that between his Cherbourg trip and the preparation of this audacious and incomparably executed stroke there had been an evident connection. And I remembered the