on; I
adore him in all nature; I carry him always in my heart.'

"And she would immediately present the old woman with one of her
brochures which were destined to convert the universe.

"In the village she was not liked. In fact, the schoolmaster had
declared that she was an atheist, and that a sort of reproach attached
to her. The cure, who had been consulted by Madame Lecacheur, responded:

"'She is a heretic, but God does not wish the death of the sinner, and
I believe her to be a person of pure morals.'

"These words, 'atheist,' 'heretic,' words which no one can precisely
define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however, that
this English-woman was rich, and that she had passed her life in
traveling through every country in the world, because her family had
thrown her off. Why had her family thrown her off? Because of her
natural impiety?

"She was, in fact, one of those people of exalted principles, one of
those opinionated puritans of whom England produces so many, one of
those good and insupportable old women who haunt the tables d'hote of
every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the
charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere
their fantastic manias, their petrified vestal manners, their
indescribable toilettes, and a certain odor of india-rubber, which
makes one believe that at night they slip themselves into a case of
that material. When I meet one of these people in a hotel, I act like
birds which see a manikin in a field.

"This woman, however, appeared so singular that she did not displease
me.

"Madame Lecacheur, hostile by instinct to everything that was not
rustic, felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic
extravagances of the old girl. She had found a phrase by which to
describe her, I know not how, but a phrase assuredly contemptuous,
which had sprung to her lips, invented probably by some confused and
mysterious travail of soul. She said: 'That woman is a demoniac.' This
phrase, as uttered by that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to
me irresistibly comic. I, myself, never called her now anything else
but 'the demoniac.' feeling a singular pleasure in pronouncing this
word on seeing her.

"I would ask Mother Lecacheur: 'Well, what is our demoniac about
to-day?' To which my rustic friend would respond, with an air of having
been scandalized:

"'What do you think, sir? She has picked up a toad which has ha