duty; she took as her rule of conduct the voice of her own
conscience rather than the demands of social law. In her, nobility of
feeling and action would ever be spontaneous; her judgment would confirm
the impulse of her heart. She was destined to do right as a pleasure
before doing it as an obligation. This distinction is the peculiar sign
of Christian education. These principles, altogether different from
those that are taught to men, were suitable for a woman,--the spirit and
the conscience of the home, the beautifier of domestic life, the queen
of her household. All three of these old preceptors followed the same
method with Ursula. Instead of recoiling before the bold questions of
innocence, they explained to her the reasons of things and the best
means of action, taking care to give her none but correct ideas.
When, apropos of a flower, a star, a blade of grass, her thoughts went
straight to God, the doctor and the professor told her that the priest
alone could answer her. None of them intruded on the territory of the
others; the doctor took charge of her material well-being and the
things of life; Jordy's department was instruction; moral and spiritual
questions and the ideas appertaining to the higher life belonged to
the abbe. This noble education was not, as it often is, counteracted by
injudicious servants. La Bougival, having been lectured on the subject,
and being, moreover, too simple in mind and character to interfere, did
nothing to injure the work of these great minds. Ursula, a privileged
being, grew up with good geniuses round her; and her naturally fine
disposition made the task of each a sweet and easy one. Such manly
tenderness, such gravity lighted by smiles, such liberty without danger,
such perpetual care of soul and body made little Ursula, when nine years
of age, a well-trained child and delightful to behold.

Unhappily, this paternal trinity was broken up. The old captain died the
following year, leaving the abbe and the doctor to finish his work, of
which, however, he had accomplished the most difficult part. Flowers
will bloom of themselves if grown in a soil thus prepared. The old
gentleman had laid by for ten years past one thousand francs a year,
that he might leave ten thousand to his little Ursula, and keep a place
in her memory during her whole life. In his will, the wording of which
was very touching, he begged his legatee to spend the four or five
hundred francs that came of her litt