t
you--you shall not deprive yourself any longer for me. I have conquered
all difficulties, and now I like the noise of the game."

Ursula won. The abbe had slipped in to enjoy his triumph. The next day
Minoret, who had always refused to let Ursula learn music, sent to
Paris for a piano, made arrangements at Fontainebleau for a teacher, and
submitted to the annoyance that her constant practicing was to him. One
of poor Jordy's predictions was fulfilled,--the girl became an excellent
musician. The doctor, proud of her talent, had lately sent to Paris for
a master, an old German named Schmucke, a distinguished professor who
came once a week; the doctor willingly paying for an art which he had
formerly declared to be useless in a household. Unbelievers do not like
music--a celestial language, developed by Catholicism, which has taken
the names of the seven notes from one of the church hymns; every note
being the first syllable of the seven first lines in the hymn to Saint
John.

The impression produced on the doctor by Ursula's first communion though
keen was not lasting. The calm and sweet contentment which prayer and
the exercise of resolution produced in that young soul had not their due
influence upon him. Having no reasons for remorse or repentance himself,
he enjoyed a serene peace. Doing his own benefactions without hope of a
celestial harvest, he thought himself on a nobler plane than religious
men whom he always accused for making, as he called it, terms with God.

"But," the abbe would say to him, "if all men would be so, you must
admit that society would be regenerated; there would be no more
misery. To be benevolent after your fashion one must needs be a great
philosopher; you rise to your principles through reason, you are a
social exception; whereas it suffices to be a Christian to make us
benevolent in ours. With you, it is an effort; with us, it comes
naturally."

"In other words, abbe, I think, and you feel,--that's the whole of it."

However, at twelve years of age, Ursula, whose quickness and natural
feminine perceptions were trained by her superior education, and whose
intelligence in its dawn was enlightened by a religious spirit (of all
spirits the most refined), came to understand that her godfather did
not believe in a future life, nor in the immortality of the soul, nor in
providence, nor in God. Pressed with questions by the innocent creature,
the doctor was unable to hide the fatal secret. U