d its
leg battered, and carried it to her room, and has put it in her
washstand, and dressed it up like a man. If that is not profanation, I
should like to know what is!'

"On another occasion, when walking along the Falaise, she had bought a
large fish which had just been caught, simply to throw it back into the
sea again. The sailor, from whom she had bought it, though paid
handsomely, was greatly provoked at this act--more exasperated, indeed,
than if she had put her hand into his pocket and taken his money. For a
whole month he could not speak of the circumstance without getting into
a fury and denouncing it as an outrage. Oh yes! She was indeed a
demoniac, this Miss Harriet, and Mother Lecacheur must have had an
inspiration of genius in thus christening her.

"The stable-boy, who was called Sapeur, because he had served in Africa
in his youth, entertained other aversions. He said, with a roguish air:
'She is an old hag who has lived her days.' If the poor woman had but
known!

"Little kind-hearted Celeste did not wait upon her willingly, but I was
never able to understand why. Probably her only reason was that she was
a stranger, of another race, of a different tongue, and of another
religion. She was in good truth a demoniac!

"She passed her time wandering about the country, adoring and searching
for God in nature. I found her one evening on her knees in a cluster of
bushes. Having discovered something red through the leaves, I brushed
aside the branches, and Miss Harriet at once rose to her feet, confused
at having been found thus, looking at me with eyes as terrible as those
of a wild cat surprised in open day.

"Sometimes, when I was working among the rocks, I would suddenly descry
her on the banks of the Falaise standing like a semaphore signal. She
gazed passionately at the vast sea, glittering in the sunlight, and the
boundless sky empurpled with fire. Sometimes I would distinguish her at
the bottom of a valley, walking quickly, with her elastic English step;
and I would go toward her, attracted by I know not what, simply to see
her illuminated visage, her dried-up features, which seemed to glow
with an ineffable, inward, and profound happiness.

"Often I would encounter her in the corner of a field sitting on the
grass, under the shadow of an apple-tree, with her little Bible lying
open on her knee, while she looked meditatively into the distance.

"I could no longer tear myself away from that quie