ach
other, and put on a deeply serious expression to listen to Madame de la
Baudraye, who made them a set speech of thanks for coming to cheer the
monotony of her days. Dinah walked her guests round and round the
lawn, ornamented with large vases of flowers, which lay in front of the
Chateau d'Anzy.

"How is it," said Lousteau, the practical joker, "that so handsome a
woman as you, and apparently so superior, should have remained buried in
the country? What do you do to make life endurable?"

"Ah! that is the crux," said the lady. "It is unendurable. Utter despair
or dull resignation--there is no third alternative; that is the arid
soil in which our existence is rooted, and on which a thousand stagnant
ideas fall; they cannot fertilize the ground, but they supply food
for the etiolated flowers of our desert souls. Never believe in
indifference! Indifference is either despair or resignation. Then each
woman takes up the pursuit which, according to her character, seems to
promise some amusement. Some rush into jam-making and washing, household
management, the rural joys of the vintage or the harvest, bottling
fruit, embroidering handkerchiefs, the cares of motherhood, the
intrigues of a country town. Others torment a much-enduring piano,
which, at the end of seven years, sounds like an old kettle, and ends
its asthmatic life at the Chateau d'Anzy. Some pious dames talk over the
different brands of the Word of God--the Abbe Fritaud as compared with
the Abbe Guinard. They play cards in the evening, dance with the same
partners for twelve years running, in the same rooms, at the same dates.
This delightful life is varied by solemn walks on the Mall, visits of
politeness among the women, who ask each other where they bought their
gowns.

"Conversation is bounded on the south by remarks on the intrigues lying
hidden under the stagnant water of provincial life, on the north by
proposed marriages, on the west by jealousies, and on the east by sour
remarks.

"And so," she went on, striking an attitude, "you see a woman wrinkled
at nine-and-twenty, ten years before the time fixed by the rules of
Doctor Bianchon, a woman whose skin is ruined at an early age, who turns
as yellow as a quince when she is yellow at all--we have seen some turn
green. When we have reached that point, we try to justify our normal
condition; then we turn and rend the terrible passion of Paris with
teeth as sharp as rat's teeth. We have Puritan women h