reflected again and said with a yawn: "They are asleep, poor little
things, and I am awake, I am free to be awake."

And she wrote long letters to them in which she told them, how happy she
was, assuming a charming air of superiority, treating them as children who
knew nothing yet of life. But she thought that she knew nothing more of it
herself, and yearned to be instructed.

She felt that there was something wanting, and that her father's affection
was not enough to fill her heart.

She had looked well about her, but she had found only what was commonplace.
No more young clerks with curled hair, who darted inflammatory looks at the
women from behind the shop-windows, no Saint-Cyrion with delicate
moustache, no doctors of twenty-five or poets of eighteen. Besides her
father and the notabilities of the village, middle-aged dignitaries,
nothing but peasants only.

She held the belief which all girls hold; a nice little belief very
convenient and very simple: the sweet Jesus, the Paschal Lamb, and the
Immaculate Conception. Around this trio gravitated all the rest, but
graceful and light as the mists which float at sun-rise.

Therefore the Captain had not thought it his duty to disappoint his
daughter, when she said to him one Sunday morning, "My darling papa, I am
going to Mass." He let her go, grumbling; and she noticed Marcel.

The fine figure of the priest struck her; she was touched by the sound of
his voice, and while she fixed her gaze upon him, she encountered his, and
their eyes fell.

In the days when she took her walks at Saint-Denis, and saw for the first
time that she was admired by some handsome young men, she had not
experienced a more delicious emotion.

She was astonished and almost ashamed at it, and nevertheless she returned
for Vespers on purpose to see the Cure. She soon gained the certainty that
she had attracted his attention, and she was flattered at it. What! she, a
little school-girl, was she distracting from his prayers, at the very foot
of the altar, a minister of the altar? She felt herself rise in importance.
But her natural modesty made her reflect directly: "Has he looked at me
because I am a stranger, or because I am pretty?"

She was almost afraid that it was not this latter reason; Marcel's eyes
reassured her.

Nevertheless, the first impulse of self-love satisfied, what did it concern
her? How did this priest's admiration affect her? Is a priest a man? It
must be no more tho