for five and twenty
years in a land of wolves, whose language she had not even been able to
learn. Ah! yes, tortured as the young man was by his doubts, he would
have liked to be as she was, a well-balanced, healthy, ignorant creature
who was quite content with what the world offered, and who, when she had
accomplished her daily task, went fully satisfied to bed, careless as to
whether she might never wake again!

However, as Pierre's eyes once more sought the state bed, he suddenly
recognised the old priest, who was kneeling on the step of the platform,
and whose features he had hitherto been unable to distinguish. "Isn't
that Abbe Pisoni, the priest of Santa Brigida, where I sometimes said
mass?" he inquired. "The poor old man, how he weeps!"

In her quiet yet desolate voice Victorine replied, "He has good reason to
weep. He did a fine thing when he took it into his head to marry my poor
Benedetta to Count Prada. All those abominations would never have
happened if the poor child had been given her Dario at once. But in this
idiotic city they are all mad with their politics; and that old priest,
who is none the less a very worthy man, thought he had accomplished a
real miracle and saved the world by marrying the Pope and the King as he
said with a soft laugh, poor old _savant_ that he is, who for his part
has never been in love with anything but old stones--you know, all that
antiquated rubbish of theirs of a hundred thousand years ago. And now,
you see, he can't keep from weeping. The other one too came not twenty
minutes ago, Father Lorenza, the Jesuit who became the Contessina's
confessor after Abbe Pisoni, and who undid what the other had done. Yes,
a handsome man he is, but a fine bungler all the same, a perfect killjoy
with all the crafty hindrances which he brought into that divorce affair.
I wish you had been here to see what a big sign of the cross he made
after he had knelt down. He didn't cry, he didn't: he seemed to be saying
that as things had ended so badly it was evident that God had withdrawn
from all share in the business. So much the worse for the dead!"

Victorine spoke gently and without a pause, as it relieved her, to empty
her heart after the terrible hours of bustle and suffocation which she
had spent since the previous day. "And that one yonder," she resumed in a
lower voice, "don't you recognise her?"

She glanced towards the poorly clad girl whom Pierre had taken for a
servant, and whom in