in horror the petty gossip of
provincial life. If any one outside of this little clique of superior
persons came in to make a visit, the conversation immediately changed,
and the habitues of the house talked commonplace.

The hotel Graslin thus became an oasis where intelligent minds found
relaxation and relief from the dulness of provincial life; where
persons connected with the government could express themselves freely
on politics without fear of having their words taken down and repeated;
where all could satirize that which provoked satire, and where each
individual abandoned his professional trammels and yielded himself up to
his natural self.

So, after being the most obscure young girl in all Limoges, considered
ugly, dull, and vacant, Madame Graslin, at the beginning of the year
1828, was regarded as one of the leading personages in the town, and the
most noted woman in society. No one went to see her in the mornings, for
all knew her habits of benevolence and the regularity of her religious
observances. She always went to early mass so as not to delay her
husband's breakfast, for which, however, there was no fixed hour, though
she never failed to be present and to serve it herself. Graslin had
trained his wife to this little ceremony. He continued to praise her on
all occasions; he thought her perfect; she never asked him for anything;
he could pile up louis upon louis, and spread his investments over a
wide field of enterprise through his relations with the Brezacs;
he sailed with a fair wind and well freighted over the ocean of
commerce,--his intense business interest keeping him in the still,
though half-intoxicated, frenzy of gamblers watching events on the green
table of speculation.

During this happy period, and until the beginning of the year 1829,
Madame Graslin attained, in the eyes of her friends, to a degree of
beauty that was really extraordinary, the reasons of which they
were unable to explain. The blue of the iris expanded like a flower,
diminishing the dark circle of the pupil, and seeming to float in
a liquid and languishing light that was full of love. Her forehead,
illumined by thoughts and memories of happiness, was seen to whiten like
the zenith before the dawn, and its lines were purified by an inward
fire. Her face lost those heated brown tones which betoken a disturbance
of the liver,--that malady of vigorous constitutions, or of persons
whose soul is distressed and whose affections