great work in a manner that their master
declared was almost faultless, they embraced each other in ecstasy and
the old man called them his Saint Cecilias.

The two Maries were not taken to a ball until they were sixteen years
of age, and then only four times a year in special houses. They were not
allowed to leave their mother's side without instructions as to their
behavior with their partners; and so severe were those instructions that
they dared say only yes or no during a dance. The eye of the countess
never left them, and she seemed to know from the mere movement of their
lips the words they uttered. Even the ball-dresses of these poor little
things were piously irreproachable; their muslin gowns came up to their
chins with an endless number of thick ruches, and the sleeves came down
to their wrists. Swathing in this way their natural charms, this costume
gave them a vague resemblance to Egyptian hermae; though from these
blocks of muslin rose enchanting little heads of tender melancholy.
They felt themselves the objects of pity, and inwardly resented it. What
woman, however innocent, does not desire to excite envy?

No dangerous idea, unhealthy or even equivocal, soiled the pure pulp of
their brain; their hearts were innocent, their hands were horribly red,
and they glowed with health. Eve did not issue more innocent from the
hands of God than these two girls from their mother's home when they
went to the mayor's office and the church to be married, after receiving
the simple but terrible injunction to obey in all things two men with
whom they were henceforth to live and sleep by day and by night. To
their minds, nothing could be worse in the strange houses where they
were to go than the maternal convent.

Why did the father of these poor girls, the Comte de Granville, a wise
and upright magistrate (though sometimes led away by politics), refrain
from protecting the helpless little creatures from such crushing
despotism? Alas! by mutual understanding, about ten years after
marriage, he and his wife were separated while living under one roof.
The father had taken upon himself the education of his sons, leaving
that of the daughters to his wife. He saw less danger for women than for
men in the application of his wife's oppressive system. The two Maries,
destined as women to endure tyranny, either of love or marriage, would
be, he thought, less injured than boys, whose minds ought to have freer
play, and whose man