. Why harass our soul with endeavour to locate the infinite?
As much of it as can be given to man will go to him who has learned to
wonder.

78. Do you know a novel of Balzac, belonging to the "Celibataires"
series, called Pierrette? It is not one of Balzac's masterpieces, but
it has points of much interest for us. It is the story of an orphaned
Breton girl, a sweet, innocent child, who is suddenly snatched away, by
her evil star, from the grandparents who adore her, and transferred to
the care of an aunt and uncle. Monsieur Rogron and his sister Sylvia. A
hard, gloomy couple, these two; retired shopkeepers, who live in a
dreary house in the back streets of a dreary country town. Their
celibacy weighs heavily upon them; they are miserly, and absurdly vain;
morose, and instinctively full of hatred.

The poor inoffensive girl has hardly set foot in the house before her
martyrdom begins. There are terrible questions of money and economy,
ambitions to be gratified, marriages to be prevented, inheritances to
be turned aside: complications of every kind. The neighbours and
friends of the Rogrons behold the long and painful sufferings of the
victim with unruffled tranquillity, for their every natural instinct
leads them to applaud the success of the stronger. And at last
Pierrette dies, as unhappily as she has lived; while the others all
triumph--the Rogrons, the detestable lawyer Vinet, and all those who
had helped them; and the subsequent happiness of these wretches remains
wholly untroubled. Fate would even seem to smile upon them; and Balzac,
carried away in spite of himself by the reality of it all, ends his
story, almost regretfully, with these words: "How the social villainies
of this world would thrive under our laws if there were no God!"

We need not go to fiction for tragedies of this kind; there are many
houses in which they are matters of daily occurrence. I have borrowed
this instance from Balzac's pages because the story lay there ready to
hand; the chronicle, day by day, of the triumph of injustice. The very
highest morality is served by such instances, and a great lesson is
taught; and perhaps the moralists are wrong who try to weaken this
lesson by finding excuses for the iniquities of fate. Some are
satisfied that God will give innocence its due reward. Others tell us
that in this case it is not the victim who has the greatest claim upon
our sympathy. And these are doubtless right, from many points of view