the constant whirl of society, had effaced from his
memory the dull and peaceful surroundings of a country life, and the
contrast was so startling as to give him a sort of internal shiver. To
have just left a party at the house of Cambaceres, where life was so
large, where minds could expand, where the splendor of the Imperial
Court was so vividly reflected, and to be dropped suddenly into a
sphere of squalidly narrow ideas--was it not like a leap from Italy into
Greenland?--"Living here is not life!" said he to himself, as he looked
round the Methodistical room. The old Count, seeing his son's dismay,
went up to him, and taking his hand, led him to a window, where there
was still a gleam of daylight, and while the maid was lighting the
yellow tapers in the candle branches he tried to clear away the clouds
that the dreary place had brought to his brow.

"Listen, my boy," said he. "Old Bontems' widow is a frenzied bigot.
'When the devil is old--' you know! I see that the place goes
against the grain. Well, this is the whole truth; the old woman is
priest-ridden; they have persuaded her that it was high time to make
sure of heaven, and the better to secure Saint Peter and his keys she
pays before-hand. She goes to Mass every day, attends every service,
takes the communion every Sunday God has made, and amuses herself
by restoring chapels. She had given so many ornaments, and albs, and
chasubles, she has crowned the canopy with so many feathers, that on
the occasion of the last Corpus Christi procession as great a crowd came
together as to see a man hanged, just to stare at the priests in their
splendid dresses and all the vessels regilt. This house too is a sort of
Holy Land. It was I who hindered her from giving those three pictures to
the Church--a Domenichino, a Correggio, and an Andrea del Sarto--worth a
good deal of money."

"But Angelique?" asked the young man.

"If you do not marry her, Angelique is done for," said the Count. "Our
holy apostles counsel her to live a virgin martyr. I have had the utmost
difficulty in stirring up her little heart, since she has been the only
child, by talking to her of you; but, as you will easily understand,
as soon as she is married you will carry her off to Paris. There,
festivities, married life, the theatres, and the rush of Parisian
society, will soon make her forget confessionals, and fasting, and
hair shirts, and Masses, which are the exclusive nourishment of such
creatur