world, although he was hampered with debts.

But it was only in the silence of night watches that these fantastic
marriages, in which she played the sublime role of guardian angel, took
place. The next day, though Josette found her mistress' bed in a tossed
and tumbled condition, Mademoiselle Cormon had recovered her dignity,
and could only think of a man of forty, a land-owner, well preserved,
and a quasi-young man.

The Abbe de Sponde was incapable of giving his niece the slightest aid
in her matrimonial manoeuvres. The worthy soul, now seventy years of
age, attributed the disasters of the French Revolution to the design of
Providence, eager to punish a dissolute Church. He had therefore flung
himself into the path, long since abandoned, which anchorites once
followed in order to reach heaven: he led an ascetic life without
proclaiming it, and without external credit. He hid from the world his
works of charity, his continual prayers, his penances; he thought that
all priests should have acted thus during the days of wrath and terror,
and he preached by example. While presenting to the world a calm and
smiling face, he had ended by detaching himself utterly from earthly
interests; his mind turned exclusively to sufferers, to the needs of the
Church, and to his own salvation. He left the management of his property
to his niece, who gave him the income of it, and to whom he paid a
slender board in order to spend the surplus in secret alms and gifts to
the Church.

All the abbe's affections were concentrated on his niece, who regarded
him as a father, but an abstracted father, unable to conceive the
agitations of the flesh, and thanking God for maintaining his dear
daughter in a state of celibacy; for he had, from his youth up, adopted
the principles of Saint John Chrysostom, who wrote that "the virgin
state is as far above the marriage state as the angel is above
humanity." Accustomed to reverence her uncle, Mademoiselle Cormon dared
not initiate him into the desires which filled her soul for a change
of state. The worthy man, accustomed, on his side, to the ways of
the house, would scarcely have liked the introduction of a husband.
Preoccupied by the sufferings he soothed, lost in the depths of prayer,
the Abbe de Sponde had periods of abstraction which the habitues of the
house regarded as absent-mindedness. In any case, he talked little; but
his silence was affable and benevolent. He was a man of great height
and