nstant she
was disengaged. This was the less objectionable, as she never snored or
grew distempered in complexion when she slept. On the contrary, she
looked the very picture of luxurious and appetising ease, and woke
without a start to the perfect possession of her faculties. I am afraid
she was greatly an animal, but she was a very nice animal to have about.
In this way she had little to do with Jean-Marie; but the sympathy which
had been established between them on the first night remained unbroken;
they held occasional conversations, mostly on household matters; to the
extreme disappointment of the Doctor, they occasionally sallied off
together to that temple of debasing, superstition, the village church;
madame and he, both in their Sunday's best, drove twice a month to
Fontainebleau and returned laden with purchases; and in short, although
the Doctor still continued to regard them as irreconcilably antipathetic,
their relation was as intimate, friendly, and confidential as their
natures suffered.

I fear, however, that in her heart of hearts madame kindly despised and
pitied the boy. She had no admiration for his class of virtues; she liked
a smart, polite, forward, roguish sort of boy, cap in hand, light of
foot, meeting the eye; she liked volubility, charm, a little vice--the
promise of a second Doctor Desprez. And it was her indefeasible belief
that Jean-Marie was dull. "Poor dear boy," she had said once, "how sad it
is that he should be so stupid!" She had never repeated that remark, for
the Doctor had raged like a wild bull, denouncing the brutal bluntness of
her mind, bemoaning his own fate to be so unequally mated with an ass,
and, what touched Anastasie more nearly, menacing the table china by the
fury of his gesticulations. But she adhered silently to her opinion; and
when Jean-Marie was sitting, stolid, blank, but not unhappy, over his
unfinished tasks, she would snatch her opportunity in the Doctor's
absence, go over to him, put her arms about his neck, lay her cheek to
his, and communicate her sympathy with his distress. "Do not mind," she
would say; "I, too, am not at all clever, and I can assure you that it
makes no difference in life."

The Doctor's view was naturally different. That gentleman never wearied
of the sound of his own voice, which was, to say the truth, agreeable
enough to hear. He now had a listener, who was not so cynically
indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his m