!"

In 1820 an incident occurred in the simple uneventful life the girl was
leading, which might have had no importance in the life of any other
young woman, but which, in point of fact, did no doubt exercise over
Veronique's future a terrible influence.

On one of the suppressed church fete-days, when many persons went about
their daily labor, though the Sauviats scrupulously closed their shop,
attended mass, and took a walk, Veronique passed, on their way to the
fields, a bookseller's stall on which lay a copy of "Paul and Virginia."
She had a fancy to buy it for the sake of the engraving, and her father
paid a hundred sous for the fatal volume, which he put into the pocket
of his coat.

"Wouldn't it be well to show that book to Monsieur le vicaire before
you read it?" said her mother, to whom all printed books were a sealed
mystery.

"I thought of it," answered Veronique.

The girl passed the whole night reading the story,--one of the most
touching bits of writing in the French language. The picture of mutual
love, half Biblical and worthy of the earlier ages of the world, ravaged
her heart. A hand--was it divine or devilish?--raised the veil which,
till then, had hidden nature from her. The Little Virgin still existing
in the beautiful young girl thought on the morrow that her flowers had
never been so beautiful; she heard their symbolic language, she looked
into the depths of the azure sky with a fixedness that was almost
ecstasy, and tears without a cause rolled down her cheeks.

In the life of all women there comes a moment when they comprehend their
destiny,--when their hitherto mute organization speaks peremptorily.
It is not always a man, chosen by some furtive involuntary glance, who
awakens their slumbering sixth sense; oftener it is some unexpected
sight, the aspect of scenery, the _coup d'oeil_ of religious pomp, the
harmony of nature's perfumes, a rosy dawn veiled in slight mists, the
winning notes of some divinest music, or indeed any unexpected motion
within the soul or within the body. To this lonely girl, buried in that
old house, brought up by simple, half rustic parents, who had never
heard an unfit word, whose pure unsullied mind had never known the
slightest evil thought,--to the angelic pupil of Soeur Marthe and the
vicar of Saint-Etienne the revelation of love, the life of womanhood,
came from the hand of genius through one sweet book. To any other
mind the book would have offered no dang