month."

CHAPTER IV

"You she preferred to all the gay resorts,
Where female vanity might wish to shine,
The pomp of cities, and the pride of courts."

LYTTELTON.

At the end of the time prescribed, the judges, including Victoire
herself, who was the most severe of them all, agreed she had justly
deserved her reward. Maurice obtained his wish; and Victoire's temper
never relapsed into its former bad habits--so powerful is the effect of a
well-chosen motive! Perhaps the historian may be blamed for dwelling on
such trivial anecdotes; yet a lady, who was accustomed to the
conversation of deep philosophers and polished courtiers, listened
without disdain to these simple annals. Nothing appeared to her a trifle
that could tend to form the habits of temper, truth, honesty, order, and
industry: habits which are to be early induced, not by solemn precepts,
but by practical lessons. A few more examples of these shall be
recorded, notwithstanding the fear of being tiresome.

One day little Babet, who was now five years old, saw, as she was coming
to school, an old woman sitting at a corner of the street beside a large
black brazier full of roasted chestnuts. Babet thought that the
chestnuts looked and smelled very good; the old woman was talking
earnestly to some people, who were on her other side; Babet filled her
work-bag with chestnuts, and then ran after her mother and sister, who,
having turned the corner of the street, had not seen what passed. When
Babet came to the schoolroom, she opened her bag with triumph, displayed
her treasure, and offered to divide it with her companions. "Here,
Victoire," said she, "here is the largest chestnut for you."

But Victoire would not take it; for she staid that Babet had no money,
and that she could not have come honestly by these chestnuts. She spoke
so forcibly upon this point that even those who had the tempting morsel
actually at their lips forbore to bite; those who had bitten laid down
their half-eaten prize; and those who had their hands full of chestnuts
rolled them back again towards the bag. Babet cried with vexation.

"I burned my fingers in getting them for you, and now you won't eat
them!--And I must not eat them!" said she: then curbing her passion, she
added, "But at any rate, I won't be a thief. I am sure I did not think
it was being a thief just to take a few chestnuts from an old woman who
had such heaps and heaps; but Victoire says