chever of her
nieces Calyste marries. I know that you have another and much richer
marriage in Ireland for your dear Calyste, but it is well to have
two strings to your bow. In case your family will not take charge of
Calyste's establishment, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's fortune is not to
be despised. You can always find a match of seven thousand francs a year
for the dear boy, but it is not often that you could come across the
savings of forty years and landed property as well managed, built up,
and kept in repair as that of Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. That ungodly
woman, Mademoiselle des Touches, has come here to ruin many excellent
things. Her life is now known."

"And what is it?" asked the mother.

"Oh! that of a trollop," replied the rector,--"a woman of questionable
morals, a writer for the stage; frequenting theatres and actors;
squandering her fortune among pamphleteers, painters, musicians, a
devilish society, in short. She writes books herself, and has taken a
false name by which she is better known, they tell me, than by her own.
She seems to be a sort of circus woman who never enters a church except
to look at the pictures. She has spent quite a fortune in decorating
Les Touches in a most improper fashion, making it a Mohammedan paradise
where the houris are not women. There is more wine drunk there, they
say, during the few weeks of her stay than the whole year round in
Guerande. The Demoiselles Bougniol let their lodgings last year to men
with beards, who were suspected of being Blues; they sang wicked songs
which made those virtuous women blush and weep, and spent their time
mostly at Les Touches. And this is the woman our dear Calyste adores!
If that creature wanted to-night one of the infamous books in which the
atheists of the present day scoff at holy things, Calyste would saddle
his horse himself and gallop to Nantes for it. I am not sure that he
would do as much for the Church. Moreover, this Breton woman is not a
royalist! If Calyste were again called upon to strike a blow for the
cause, and Mademoiselle des Touches--the Sieur Camille Maupin, that is
her other name, as I have just remembered--if she wanted to keep him
with her the chevalier would let his old father go to the field without
him."

"Oh, no!" said the baroness.

"I should not like to put him to the proof; you would suffer too much,"
replied the rector. "All Guerande is turned upside down about Calyste's
passion for this amphibious cr