of making a man
tolerably indifferent to external matters. Being obliged to spend half
the day in court fighting for the gravest interests of men's lives
or fortunes, Granville was less alive than another might have been to
certain facts in his household.

If, on a Friday, he found none but Lenten fare, and by chance asked for
a dish of meat without getting it, his wife, forbidden by the Gospel to
tell a lie, could still, by such subterfuges as are permissible in the
interests of religion, cloak what was premeditated purpose under some
pretext of her own carelessness or the scarcity in the market. She would
often exculpate herself at the expense of the cook, and even go so far
as to scold him. At that time young lawyers did not, as they do now,
keep the fasts of the Church, the four rogation seasons, and the
vigils of festivals; so Granville was not at first aware of the regular
recurrence of these Lenten meals, which his wife took care should be
made dainty by the addition of teal, moor-hen, and fish-pies, that their
amphibious meat or high seasoning might cheat his palate. Thus the
young man unconsciously lived in strict orthodoxy, and worked out his
salvation without knowing it.

On week-days he did not know whether his wife went to Mass or no. On
Sundays, with very natural amiability, he accompanied her to church to
make up to her, as it were, for sometimes giving up vespers in favor of
his company; he could not at first fully enter into the strictness of
his wife's religious views. The theatres being impossible in summer by
reason of the heat, Granville had not even the opportunity of the great
success of a piece to give rise to the serious question of play-going.
And, in short, at the early stage of a union to which a man has been
led by a young girl's beauty, he can hardly be exacting as to his
amusements. Youth is greedy rather than dainty, and possession has a
charm in itself. How should he be keen to note coldness, dignity, and
reserve in the woman to whom he ascribes the excitement he himself
feels, and lends the glow of the fire that burns within him? He must
have attained a certain conjugal calm before he discovers that a bigot
sits waiting for love with her arms folded.

Granville, therefore, believed himself happy till a fatal event brought
its influence to bear on his married life. In the month of November 1808
the Canon of Bayeux Cathedral who had been the keeper of Madame Bontems'
conscience and her