It was based on an unutterable secret, all her own, about which she still had trembling doubts; this, too, notwithstanding her consultation of the dark oracles.
She was going to stop that.

In the long run, these charms and spells themselves bring bad luck.

Moreover, the practice, indulged in to excess, was wicked, and she had promised Clotilde,--that droll little saint,--to resort to them no more.

Hereafter, she should do nothing of the sort, except, to be sure, to take such ordinary precautions against misfortune as casting upon the floor a little of whatever she might be eating or drinking to propitiate M.Assonquer.She would have liked, could she have done it without fear of detection, to pour upon the front door-sill an oblation of beer sweetened with black molasses to Papa Lebat (who keeps the invisible keys of all the doors that admit suitors), but she dared not; and then, the hound would surely have licked it up.

Ah me! was she forgetting that she was a widow?
She was in poor plight to meet the all but icy gray morning; and, to make her misery still greater, she found, on dressing, that an accident had overtaken her, which she knew to be a trustworthy sign of love grown cold.