s in a miser's home, and the dank scent of cold incense which
gives a chill to the stale atmosphere of a chapel. This methodical
meanness, this narrowness of thought, which is visible in every detail,
can only be expressed by one word--Bigotry. In these sinister and
pitiless houses Bigotry is written on the furniture, the prints, the
pictures; speech is bigoted, the silence is bigoted, the faces are
those of bigots. The transformation of men and things into bigotry is
an inexplicable mystery, but the fact is evident. Everybody can see that
bigots do not walk, do not sit, do not speak, as men of the world
walk, sit, and speak. Under their roof every one is ill at ease, no one
laughs, stiffness and formality infect everything, from the mistress'
cap down to her pincushion; eyes are not honest, the folks are more like
shadows, and the lady of the house seems perched on a throne of ice.

One morning poor Granville discerned with grief and pain that all
the symptoms of bigotry had invaded his home. There are in the world
different spheres in which the same effects are seen though produced by
dissimilar causes. Dulness hedges such miserable homes round with walls
of brass, enclosing the horrors of the desert and the infinite void. The
home is not so much a tomb as that far worse thing--a convent. In
the center of this icy sphere the lawyer could study his wife
dispassionately. He observed, not without keen regret, the
narrow-mindedness that stood confessed in the very way that her hair
grew, low on the forehead, which was slightly depressed; he discovered
in the perfect regularity of her features a certain set rigidity which
before long made him hate the assumed sweetness that had bewitched him.
Intuition told him that one day of disaster those thin lips might say,
"My dear, it is for your good!"

Madame de Granville's complexion was acquiring a dull pallor and an
austere expression that were a kill-joy to all who came near her. Was
this change wrought by the ascetic habits of a pharisaism which is not
piety any more than avarice is economy? It would be hard to say. Beauty
without expression is perhaps an imposture. This imperturbable set smile
that the young wife always wore when she looked at Granville seemed to
be a sort of Jesuitical formula of happiness, by which she thought
to satisfy all the requirements of married life. Her charity was an
offence, her soulless beauty was monstrous to those who knew her; the
mildness