He railed at Filion Lacasse; he called the suspicious habitants clodhoppers, who didn't know any better--which was a tribute to his own superior birth; and at last, carried away by a feverish curiosity, he suggested that Rosalie should go and look through the cracks in the shutters of the tailor-shop and find out what was going on within.

This was indignantly rejected by Rosalie, but the more she thought, the more uneasy she became.

She ceased to reply to her father's remarks, and he at last relapsed into gloom, and said that he was tired and would go to bed.

Thereupon she wheeled him inside his bedroom, bade him good-night, and left him to his moodiness, which, however, was soon absorbed in a deep sleep, for the mind of the little grey postmaster could no more hold trouble or thought than a sieve.
Left alone, Rosalie began to be tortured.

What were they doing in the house opposite?
Go and look through the windows?
But she had never spied on people in her life! Yet would it be spying?
Would it not be pardonable?
In the interest of the man who had been attacked in the morning by the tailor, who had been threatened by the saddler, and concerning whom she had seen a signal pass between old Louis and Filion Lacasse, would it not be a humane thing to do?
It might be foolish and feminine to be anxious, but did she not mean well, and was it not, therefore, honourable?
The mystery inflamed her imagination.