Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation.
"Monseigneur, Monseigneur!" she exclaimed, "does your Grace know where the basket of silver is?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop.
"Jesus the Lord be blessed!" she resumed; "I did not know what had become of it."
The Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed. He presented it to Madame Magloire.
"Here it is."
"Well!" said she.
"Nothing in it!
And the silver?"
"Ah," returned the Bishop, "so it is the silver which troubles you? I don't know where it is."
"Great, good God!
It is stolen!
That man who was here last night has stolen it."
In a twinkling, with all the vivacity of an alert old woman, Madame Magloire had rushed to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned to the Bishop.
The Bishop had just bent down, and was sighing as he examined a plant of cochlearia des Guillons, which the basket had broken as it fell across the bed.
He rose up at Madame Magloire's cry.
"Monseigneur, the man is gone!
The silver has been stolen!"
As she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of the garden, where traces of the wall having been scaled were visible. The coping of the wall had been torn away.
"Stay! yonder is the way he went.