rule of her conduct the voice of her conscience, rather than the social law. With her, the beautiful in sentiment and in action must be spontaneous: the judgment would confirm the impulse of the heart. She was destined to do good as a pleasure, before doing it as an obligation. This shade is peculiar to Christian education. These principles, quite other than those to be impressed on men, suited a woman, the genius and conscience of the family, the secret elegance of domestic life, indeed, the almost queen in the bosom of the household. All three proceeded in the same manner with this child. Far from withdrawing before the audacities of innocence, they explained to Ursula the end of things and the known means, never formulizing to her other than just ideas. When, about an herb, a flower, a star, she went straight to God, the professor and the doctor told her that the priest alone could answer her not one of them encroached on the other's ground. The godfather took care for all the material well-being and things of this life; the intellectual culture belonged to Jordy; morals, metaphysics, and all high questions belonged to the curate.

This fine education was not, as often happens in the richest houses, contradicted by imprudent servants. La Bougival, admonished on this subject, and besides, too simple of mind and character to interfere, did not derange the work of these great minds. Ursula, a privileged creature, had then around her three good genii to whom her lovely nature rendered every task easy and light.

This virile tenderness, this gravity tempered by smiles, this liberty without danger, this perpetual care for the soul and the body made of her at the age of nine a charming and accomplished child.

Unfortunately, this paternal trinity was broken. In the following year, the old captain died, leaving the doctor and the curate to continue his work, after having accomplished the most difficult part. Flowers ought to spring up of themselves in a soil so well prepared. The gentleman had, during nine years, economized one thousand francs each year, in order to bequeath ten thousand francs to his little Ursula, that she might preserve a remembrance of him all her life. In his will he invited his legatee to employ exclusively for her toilet the four or five hundred francs income which this little capital brought her. When the magistrate set the seals in the house of his old friend, there was found in a closet which he had never let any body enter, a great quantity of playthings, many

of which were broken, and all of which had been used; playthings of the past time, piously preserved, and which M. Bougrand was to burn, himself, at the request of the good captain. Towards this epoch, she was to make her first communion. The Abbé Chaperon employed a whole year in the instruction of this pupil, for whom the heart and the intelligence, so developed, but so prudently sustained by each other, required a peculiar spiritual aliment. Such was this initiation into the knowledge of divine things, that since the epoch when the soul takes its religious form Ursula had become the pious and mystical young girl whose character was always above events, and whose heart dominated all adversity. Then it was, also, that there secretly began, between this incredulous old age, and this childhood full of faith, a struggle long unknown to her that provoked it, but the result of which occupied the whole town, and was to have a serious influence over Ursula's future, by setting against her the collateral heirs of the doctor.

During the first six months of the year 1824, Ursula passed nearly all her mornings at the presbytery. The old doctor divined the intentions of the curate. The priest wished to make of Ursula an invincible argument. The incredulous man, loved by his goddaughter as by an only daughter, would believe in the candor, would be seduced by the touching effects of religion in the soul of a child whose love resembled those trees of Indian climes always loaded with flowers and fruits, always green and always balmy. A beautiful life is more powerful than the most vigorous reasoning. We can not resist the charms of certain images. Thus the doctor's eyes were moist with tears without his knowing why, when he saw the daughter of his heart setting out for church, dressed in a robe of white crape, with white satin shoes, decked with white ribands, her head girt with a bandelitte royale attached upon the side with a large knot, the thousand ringlets of her hair flowing over the swell of her shoulders, like flowers on snow, her corsage bordered with a pointed frill, adorned with comets, her eyes starry with a first hope, flying grand and happy to a first union, loving her godfather better since she had raised herself up to God. When he perceived the thought of eternity giving sustenance to this soul, up to that time in the lymbo of childhood, as after the night the Sun gives light to the Earth, always, without knowing why, he was troubled in remaining alone at home. Seated on the steps

of his porch, he kept his eyes long fixed upon the wicket, between the bars of which his pupil had disappeared, saying to him, "Godfather, why don't you come? I shall not then be happy without you." Although shaken to its roots, still the pride of the encyclopedist did not yet bend. He directed his walk, however, so as to see the procession of the communicants, and distinguished his little Ursula, glowing with exaltation, beneath the veil. She raised on him an inspired look which opened in the stony part of his heart the corner closed to God. But the deist held firm; he said to himself: "Mummeries! To imagine that if there exist an artificer of the worlds, this organizer of the infinite should occupy himself with these frivolities!"

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He laughed, and continued his walk upon the heights which overlook the road to Gatinais, where the bells, rung in chimes, diffused afar the joy of families.

The noise of backgammon is insupportable to those who do not understand this game, one of the most difficult that is played. In order not to annoy his pupil, who, from the exceeding delicacy of her organs and nervous system, could not hear without suffering those moves and that language the meaning of which was unknown to her, the old Jordy, in his lifetime, and the doctor, always waited for their child to be in bed, or out walking. It happened, often enough, that the game was going on when Ursula returned: she then resigned herself with infinite grace, and sat with her work near the window. She felt a repugnance towards this game, the first appreciations of which are indeed dry and inaccessible to many minds, and so difficult to be mastered that, if the habit be not acquired while young, it is almost impossible to learn it afterwards. Now, the evening of her first communion, when Ursula returned to her guardian, alone for this evening, she placed the backgammon-board before the old man :

"Let us see who shall have the first move," said she.

"Ursula," replied the doctor, "is it not a sin to make fun of your godfather on the day of your first communion ?"

"I am in earnest," said she, taking her seat; I owe myself to your pleasures you who protect all mine. you who protect all mine. When M. Chaperon was satisfied with me, he would give me a lesson in backgammon, and he gave me so many that I am able to beat you. . . . . You shall not put restraint upon yourself any more on my account.

I have conquered all the difficulties, so as not to stand in the way of your pleasures, and now the noise of backgammon pleases me.” Ursula won. The curate came in to surprise the players, and to enjoy his triumph. The next day, Minoret, who, until then, had refused to let his pupil learn music, repaired to Paris; bought a piano there, made arrangements, at Fontainebleau, with a musicmistress, and submitted to the annoyance which the continual practising of his pupil must cause him. One of the predictions of the late Jordy, the phrenologist, was realized: the little girl became an excellent musician. The guardian, proud of his goddaughter, now called from Paris, once a week, an old German, named Smucke, a learned professor of music, and met the expenses of this art, at first regarded by him as useless in the family. Skeptics do not love music-that celestial language developed by Catholicism, which has taken the names of the seven notes in one of its hymns: each note is the first syllable of one of the seven verses of the hymn to St. John. The impression produced upon the old man by Ursula's first communion, although vivid, was transient. The calm, the contentment, which the works of resolution and prayer diffused in this young soul, were, also, examples without force for him. Without any subject of remorse or of repentance, Minoret enjoyed perfect serenity. In accomplishing his benefits, without hope of a celestial harvest, he found himself greater than the Catholic, whom he always reproached with practising usury with God.

But," said the Abbé Chaperon to him, "if men would all make this kind of trade, confess that society would be perfect, there would be no more unfortunates. To be beneficent after your fashion, one must be a great philosopher; you raise yourself to your doctrine by reasoning, you are a social exception; while it suffices to be a Christian in order to be beneficent in ours. With you, it is an effort; with us, it is natural.”

"Which means to say, curate, that I think, and that that is all."

you

feel;

At her twelfth year, however, Ursula, in whom the tact and address natural to woman were exercised by a superior education, and whose sense, in all its flower, was enlightened by the religious spirit,-of all the kinds of spirit the most delicate,-understood, at last, that her godfather believed neither in a future, nor in

the immortality of the soul, nor in a providence, nor in God. Pressed with questions by the innocent creature, it was impossible for the doctor longer to conceal this fatal secret. The candid consternation of Ursula at first made him smile; but, in seeing her sometimes sad, he understood all that this sadness revealed of affection for him. Absolute tenderness has a horror of every kind of discord, even in ideas that are not shared. Sometimes the doctor lent himself, as to caresses, to the reasons of his adoptive daughter spoken in a gentle and tender voice, exhaled by a sentiment the most ardent and pure.

Believers and skeptics speak two different tongues, and can never understand each other. The goddaughter, in pleading the cause of God, maltreated her godfather, as a spoiled child sometimes maltreats its mother.

The curate gently blamed Ursula, and told her that God reserved to himself the humbling of these superb minds. The young girl answered the Abbé Chaperon, that David had laid Goliah low.

This religious difference, these regrets of the child who sought to draw her guardian towards God, were the only troubles of this interior life, so sweet and so full, concealed from the eyes of the little curious village. Ursula grew up, developed, became the modest and Christian girl whom Désiré had admired, as she came out of Church. The culture of flowers in the garden, music, the pleasures of her tutor, and all the little cares that Ursula rendered him for she had relieved La Bougival in occupying herself about - filled the hours, the days, the months, of this calm existence. · Nevertheless, a year since, certain troubles of Ursula's had disquieted the doctor; but their cause having been foreseen, he contented himself with paying greater attention to her health. This sagacious observer did not fail, however, to suspect that these troubles had also their passional echo. He espied his pupil maternally; saw no one about her worthy of inspiring her love, and his anxiety subsided.

him

CHAPTER II.

About one month before the day when this drama commences, there happened, in the doctor's intellectual life, one of those facts which plough the very tuf, the field of convictions, and upturn it.