that ancient room would have admired
the sublimity of the picture. Fanny's skin was so transparent that it
was possible to read the thoughts that crossed her brow beneath it.
Piqued with a curiosity that often comes to a pure woman, she asked
herself what devilish secrets these daughters of Baal possessed to so
charm men as to make them forgetful of mother, family, country, and
self-interests. Sometimes she longed to meet this woman and judge her
soberly for herself. Her mind measured to its full extent the evils
which the innovative spirit of the age--described to her as so dangerous
for young souls by the rector--would have upon her only child, until
then so guileless; as pure as an innocent girl, and beautiful with the
same fresh beauty.

Calyste, that splendid offspring of the oldest Breton race and the
noblest Irish blood, had been nurtured by his mother with the utmost
care. Until the moment when the baroness made over the training of him
to the rector of Guerande, she was certain that no impure word, no evil
thought had sullied the ears or entered the mind of her precious son.
After nursing him at her bosom, giving him her own life twice, as it
were, after guiding his footsteps as a little child, the mother had put
him with all his virgin innocence into the hands of the pastor, who, out
of true reverence for the family, had promised to give him a thorough
and Christian education. Calyste thenceforth received the instruction
which the abbe himself had received at the Seminary. The baroness
taught him English, and a teacher of mathematics was found, not without
difficulty, among the employes at Saint-Nazaire. Calyste was therefore
necessarily ignorant of modern literature, and the advance and present
progress of the sciences. His education had been limited to geography
and the circumspect history of a young ladies' boarding-school, the
Latin and Greek of seminaries, the literature of the dead languages,
and to a very restricted choice of French writers. When, at sixteen, he
began what the Abbe Grimont called his philosophy, he was neither more
nor less than what he was when Fanny placed him in the abbe's hands. The
Church had proved as maternal as the mother. Without being over-pious or
ridiculous, the idolized young lad was a fervent Catholic.

For this son, so noble, so innocent, the baroness desired to provide a
happy life in obscurity. She expected to inherit some property, two or
three thousand pounds sterli