her own faults. She
tried to be affable; they called her false. She grew more gentle still;
they said she was a hypocrite, and her pious devotion helped on the
calumny. She spent money, gave dinners and balls, and they taxed her
with pride.

Unsuccessful in all these attempts, unjustly judged, rebuffed by the
petty and tormenting pride which characterizes provincial society,
where each individual is armed with pretensions and their attendant
uneasiness, Madame Graslin fell back into utter solitude. She returned
with eagerness to the arms of the Church. Her great soul, clothed with
so weak a flesh, showed her the multiplied commandments of Catholicism
as so many stones placed for protection along the precipices of life, so
many props brought by charitable hands to sustain human weakness on
its weary way; and she followed, with greater rigor than ever, even the
smallest religious practices.

On this the liberals of the town classed Madame Graslin among the
_devotes_, the ultras. To the different animosities Veronique had
innocently acquired, the virulence of party feeling now added its
periodical exasperation. But as this ostracism took nothing really from
her, she quietly left society and lived in books which offered her
such infinite resources. She meditated on what she read, she compared
systems, she widened immeasurably the horizons of her intellect and the
extent of her education; in this way she opened the gates of her soul to
curiosity.

During this period of resolute study, in which religion supported and
maintained her mind, she obtained the friendship of Monsieur Grossetete,
one of those old men whose mental superiority grows rusty in provincial
life, but who, when they come in contact with an eager mind, recover
something of their former brilliancy. The good man took an earnest
interest in Veronique, who, to reward him for the flattering warmth of
heart which old men show to those they like, displayed before him,
and for the first time in her life, the treasures of her soul and
the acquirements of her mind, cultivated so secretly, and now full of
blossom. An extract from a letter written by her about this time to
Monsieur Grossetete will show the condition of the mind of a woman who
was later to give signal proofs of a firm and lofty nature:--

"The flowers you sent me for the ball were charming, but they
suggested harsh reflections. Those pretty creatures gathered by
you, and doomed to wilt upon my