e institutions of
to-day, and in repeating every moment to his wife, who raised her eyes
to Heaven, and sometimes her hands also, in token of energetic assent:

"Under what a government do we live, great God!"

Madame de Meroul mentally resembled her husband, just as if they had
been brother and sister. She knew by tradition that one ought, first
of all, to reverence the Pope and the King!

And she loved them and respected them from the bottom of her heart,
without knowing them, with a poetic exaltation, with a hereditary
devotion, with all the sensibility of a well-born woman. She was
kindly in every fold of her soul. She had no child, and was
incessantly regretting it.

When M. de Meroul came across his old school fellow Joseph Mouradour
at a ball, he experienced from this meeting a profound and genuine
delight, for they had been very fond of one another in their youth.

After exclamations of astonishment over the changes caused by age in
their bodies and their faces, they had asked one another a number of
questions as to their respective careers.

Joseph Mouradour, a native of the South of France, had become a
Councilor General in his own neighborhood. Frank in his manners, he
spoke briskly and without any circumspection telling all his thoughts
with sheer indifference to prudential considerations. He was a
Republican, of that race of good-natured Republicans who make their
own ease the law of their existence, and who carry freedom of speech
to the verge of brutality.

He called at his friend's address in Paris, and was immediately a
favorite, on account of his easy cordiality, in spite of his advanced
opinions. Madame de Meroul exclaimed:

"What a pity! such a charming man!"

M. de Meroul said to his friend, in a sincere and confidential tone:
"You cannot imagine what a wrong you do to our country." He was
attached to his friend nevertheless, for no bonds are more solid than
those of childhood renewed in later life. Joseph Mouradour chaffed the
husband and wife, called them "my loving turtles," and occasionally
gave vent to loud declarations against people who were behind the age,
against all sorts of prejudices and traditions.

When he thus directed the flood of his democratic eloquence, the
married pair, feeling ill at ease, kept silent through a sense of
propriety and good-breeding; then the husband tried to turn off the
conversation, in order to avoid any friction. Joseph Mouradour did not
want to k