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He lived at a small place half-way over my division I was pulling express and the freights stopped there, changing engines. I knew Venot, the bridge carpenter, very well; met him in lodge occasionally, and once in a while he rode on the engine with me to inspect bridges. His wife was a Canadian woman, and good-looking for her forty years and ten children.

The sudden idea of divine help, of superhuman consolation, surprised him, as though it were something unforeseen and extraordinary. The image of M. Venot was evoked thereby, and he saw his little plump face and ruined teeth.

"I advise you to call other people skeptics! Why, you don't believe a thing yourself," said Leonide, making shift to find him a little space in which to sit down at her side. "It's you who spoil your own pleasures." "Exactly," he replied. "I wish to make others benefit by my experience." But the company imposed silence on him: he was scandalizing M. Venot.

But Marie wanted a hero, and would hear of nothing less. It would have caught almost any girl; but when Miles delivered her at our door and drove off, I knew that there would be a "For Rent" card on that house in a few days and that Marie Venot was bound to have a hero or nothing. Miles took his repulse calmly, but it hurt.

The two young men had begun joking at this, for they thought the little old gentleman had an idiotic expression. The idea of an unknown Venot, a gigantic Venot, acting for the whole body of the clergy, struck them in the light of a comical invention.

Vandeuvres once more assumed his dignified bearing and added gravely: "Monsieur Venot is fully aware that I believe what it is one's duty to believe." It was an act of faith, and even Leonide appeared satisfied. The young men at the end of the room no longer laughed; the company were old fogies, and amusement was not to be found there.

"God's will be done then!" muttered M. Venot. "He uses every method to assure His final triumph. Your sin will become His weapon." At La Mignotte there was much wrangling during the evening meal. Nana had found a letter from Bordenave awaiting her, in which he advised rest, just as though he were anxious to be rid of her. Little Violaine, he said, was being encored twice nightly.

It was M. Venot, and he had come and seated himself behind them, as though anxious to disappear from view. Bending forward, he murmured: "Why despair? God manifests Himself when all seems lost." He was assisting peacefully at the downfall of the house which he erewhile governed.

Count Muffat and the Marquis de Chouard were joining in the conversation, while the good Mme Hugon was falling asleep open-eyed. Lost among the petticoats, M. Venot was his own small self again and smiled as of old. Twelve struck slowly in the great solemn room. "What what do you mean?" Mme du Joncquoy resumed. "You imagine that Monsieur de Bismarck will make war on us and beat us!

Evidently that silent Theophile Venot, who contented himself by smiling and showing his ugly teeth, must have been a legacy from the late countess. So, too, must have been such ladies of mature age as Mme Chantereau and Mme du Joncquoy, besides four or five old gentlemen who sat motionless in corners.