not sufficiently serious, which cannot be too much insisted on. It is
perhaps unwise to endeavour to make a child happy too soon.

So long as she was happy, Deruchette thought all was well. She knew,
too, that it was always a pleasure to her uncle to see her pleased. The
religious sentiment in her nature was satisfied with going to the parish
church four times in the year. We have seen her in her Christmas-day
toilet. Of life, she was entirely ignorant. She had a disposition which
one day might lead her to love passionately. Meanwhile she was
contented.

She sang by fits and starts, chatted by fits and starts, enjoyed the
hour as it passed, fulfilled some little duty, and was gone again, and
was delightful in all. Add to all this the English sort of liberty which
she enjoyed. In England the very infants go alone, girls are their own
mistresses, and adolescence is almost wholly unrestrained. Such are the
differences of manners. Later, how many of these free maidens become
female slaves? I use the word in its least odious sense; I mean that
they are free in the development of their nature, but slaves to duty.

Deruchette awoke every morning with little thought of her actions of the
day before. It would have troubled her a good deal to have had to give
an account of how she had spent her time the previous week. All this,
however, did not prevent her having certain hours of strange
disquietude; times when some dark cloud seemed to pass over the
brightness of her joy. Those azure depths are subject to such shadows!
But clouds like these soon passed away. She quickly shook off such moods
with a cheerful laugh, knowing neither why she had been sad, nor why she
had regained her serenity. She was always at play. As a child, she would
take delight in teasing the passers-by. She played practical jokes upon
the boys. If the fiend himself had passed that way, she would hardly
have spared him some ingenious trick. She was pretty and innocent; and
she could abuse the immunity accorded to such qualities. She was ready
with a smile, as a cat with a stroke of her claws. So much the worse for
the victim of her scratches. She thought no more of them. Yesterday had
no existence for her. She lived in the fullness of to-day. Such it is to
have too much happiness fall to one's lot! With Deruchette impressions
vanished like the melted snow.

BOOK IV

THE BAGPIPE

I

STREAKS OF FIRE ON THE HORIZON

Gilliatt had never spo