in silence, when she suddenly
stopped, and bursting into tears, turned away into a by-lane where was a
little bench under an elm. Here she sat down and sobbed for a long time,
while I stood by. At length she raised her head and asked me, "Do morality
and religion require self-sacrifice even to the end--even to making half a
life a desert, even to heart-breaking, even unto death?"

"It scarcely belongs to a selfish mortal to counsel such virtue," I
replied; "but it is because it is exercised here and there, now and then,
once in a hundred years, that man can claim some affinity with the divine
nature."

A smile of ineffable sweetness played about the poor old girl's lips. She
wiped her eyes, and began talking of the changing aspect of the season,
and how the trees day by day more rapidly shed their leaves, and how the
Rhone had swelled within its ample bed, and of various topics apparently
unconnected with her frame of mind, but all indicating that she felt the
winter was coming--a long and dreary winter for her. At this moment
Fanfreluche, who had missed her, came down the lane barking with fierce
joy; and she took the poor little beast in her arms, and exhaled the last
bitter feeling that tormented her in these words: "Thou at least lovest
me--because I have fed thee!" In her humility she seemed now to believe
that her only claim to love was her charity; and that even this claim was
not recognized except by a dog!

I was not admitted to the secret of the family conclave that took place,
but learned simply that Nathalie pleaded with feverish energy the love
that had grown up between Marie and Claude as an insuperable bar to the
proposed marriage between Paul Boneau and her niece. Matters were arranged
by means of large sacrifices on the part of the heroic maid. Paul's face
ceased to beam over the garden-gate on a Sunday morning; and by degrees
the news got abroad that Marie was betrothed to the young artist. One day
a decent old woman in _sabots_ came to the farm-house; it was Claude's
mother, who had walked from Aix to see him. It was arranged that Claude
should pursue his studies a year longer, and then marry. Whether any
explanation took place I do not know; but I observed that the young man
sometimes looked with the same expression of wondering admiration I had
observed in the diligence on the little Nathalie---more citron-hued than
ever. At length she unhooked the cage of Coco, the parrot, took
Fanfreluche under