grandmother moved about excitedly in her chair, and exclaimed:

"This is horrible--why, it is perfectly horrible! See whether you can
find anything else to read for me, darling."

Berthe again made a search; and further down in the reports of
criminal cases at which her attention was still directed. She read:

"'Gloomy Drama.--A shop girl, no longer young, allowed herself to
yield to the embraces of a young man. Then, to avenge herself on her
lover, whose heart proved fickle, she shot him with a revolver. The
unhappy man is maimed for life. The Jury, consisting of men of moral
character, took the part of the murderess--regarding her as the victim
of illicit love, and honorably acquitted her.'"

This time the old grandmother appeared quite shocked, and, in a
trembling voice, she said.

"Why, you are mad, then, nowadays. You are mad! The good God has given
you love, the only allurement in life. Man has added to this
gallantry, the only distraction of our dull hours, and here are you
mixing up with it vitriol and revolvers, as if one were to put mud
into a flagon of Spanish wine."

Berthe did not seem to understand her grandmother's indignation.

"But grandmamma, this woman avenged herself. Remember she was married,
and her husband deceived her."

The grandmother gave a start.

"What ideas have they been filling your head with, you young girls of
to-day?"

Berthe replied:

"But marriage is sacred, grandmamma."

The grandmother's heart, which had its birth in the great age of
gallantry, gave a sudden leap.

"It is love that is sacred," she said, "Listen, child, to an old woman
who has seen three generations, and who has had a long, long
experience of men and women. Marriage and love have nothing in common.
We marry to found a family, and we form families in order to
constitute society. Society cannot dispense with marriage. If society
is a chain, each family is a link in that chain. In order to weld
those links, we always seek for metals of the same kind. When we
marry, we must bring together suitable conditions; we must combine
fortunes, unite similar races, and aim at the common interest, which
is riches and children. We marry only once, my child, because the
world requires us to do so, but we may love twenty times in one
lifetime because nature has made us like this. Marriage, you see, is
law, and love is an instinct, which impels us sometimes along a
straight and sometimes along a crooked path. The worl