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Updated: June 12, 2025
Not only was the market-place empty, but some of the house-doors were closed. The door of a small shop was even shut from within as they approached, and surreptitiously barred. Mademoiselle Brun noticed it, and Denise did not pretend to ignore it. "One would say that we had an infectious complaint," she said, with a short laugh. They went to the house of the Abbe Susini. Even this door was shut.
Mademoiselle Brun knew all the conversational tricks that serve to economize words. "It is all based upon supposition," said the erstwhile mathematical instructress of the school in the Rue du Cherche-Midi. "It will be time enough to arrive at a decision when the reverse comes. The Count de Vasselot or the Abbe Susini will, no doubt, warn us in time." "Ah!" said Mademoiselle Brun.
"I am as the good God made me, and a little worse," returned Susini. "That is your road." And so they parted. Lory rode on, happy in that he was called upon to act without too much thought. For those who think most, laugh least. De Vasselot's life had been empty enough until the outbreak of the war, and now it was full to overflowing.
It passed his door, and when it had gone by, he stepped out, after sixteen, years, to watch it, and Paff! He twisted himself round as he writhed on the ground, and there was his enemy, laughing, with the smoke still at the muzzle. The funeral was a trick. No; I shall not believe that Mattei Perucca is dead until the Abbe Susini tells me that he has seen the body.
In the Casa Perucca she had learnt what life means, and no man or woman ever forgets the place where that lesson has been acquired. "I shall come back," she whispered, looking up at the great rock with its giant pines and the two square chimneys half hidden in the foliage. And the Abbe Susini, seeing a movement of her lips, glanced curiously at her. He was still wondering what she wanted.
The Abbe Susini received her in his little bare study, where a few newspapers, half a dozen ancient volumes of theology and a life of Napoleon the Great, represented literature. He bowed silently and drew forward his own horsehair armchair. Mademoiselle Brun sat down, and crossed her hands upon the hilt of her umbrella like a soldier at rest under arms.
His face showed no surprise now. He had known this all along, and did not even take the trouble to feign astonishment. The notary gave a polite, incredulous, legal laugh. "That is an old story, Monsieur le Comte." At which point Susini so far forgot himself as to make use of a rude local method of showing contempt in pretending to spit upon the notary's floor.
It could not be chance that brought de Vasselot, and the Abbe Susini, and Mademoiselle Brun together to meet him at that time. He had been out-manoeuvred by some one of the three, and he shrewdly suspected by whom. There was nothing to do but face it and he faced it with a calm audacity. He simply ignored mademoiselle's blinking glance.
It would seem that Lory de Vasselot had played the part of a stormy petrel when he visited Paris, for that calm Frenchman, the Baron de Melide, packed his wife off to Provence the same night, and the letter that Lory wrote to the Abbe Susini, reaching Olmeta three days later, aroused its recipient from a contemplative perusal of the Petit Bastiais as if it had been a bomb-shell.
A stone no bigger than a hazel nut had been dislodged somewhere above him, and now rolled down to his feet. The dead silence of the mountains closed over him again. There was, of course, no one in sight. "It is Susini of Olmeta," he said, speaking quietly, as if he were in a room.
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