r master as if she had been an Eastern slave. With due
deference to the makers of idylls and to philanthropists, the
inhabitants of the provinces have very little idea of certain virtues;
and their scruples are of a kind that is roused by self-interest, and
not by any sentiment of the right or the becoming. Raised from infancy
with no prospect before them but poverty and ceaseless labor, they are
led to consider anything that saves them from the hell of hunger and
eternal toil as permissible, particularly if it is not contrary to any
law. Exceptions to this rule are rare. Virtue, socially speaking, is
the companion of a comfortable life, and comes only with education.

Thus the Rabouilleuse was an object of envy to all the young
peasant-girls within a circuit of ten miles, although her conduct, from
a religious point of view, was supremely reprehensible. Flore, born in
1787, grew up in the midst of the saturnalias of 1793 and 1798, whose
lurid gleams penetrated these country regions, then deprived of
priests and faith and altars and religious ceremonies; where marriage
was nothing more than legal coupling, and revolutionary maxims left a
deep impression. This was markedly the case at Issoudun, a land where,
as we have seen, revolt of all kinds is traditional. In 1802, Catholic
worship was scarcely re-established. The Emperor found it a difficult
matter to obtain priests. In 1806, many parishes all over France were
still widowed; so slowly were the clergy, decimated by the scaffold,
gathered together again after their violent dispersion.

In 1802, therefore, nothing was likely to reproach Flore Brazier,
unless it might be her conscience; and conscience was sure to be
weaker than self-interest in the ward of Uncle Brazier. If, as
everybody chose to suppose, the cynical doctor was compelled by his
age to respect a child of fifteen, the Rabouilleuse was none the less
considered very "wide awake," a term much used in that region. Still,
some persons thought she could claim a certificate of innocence from
the cessation of the doctor's cares and attentions in the last two
years of his life, during which time he showed her something more than
coldness.

Old Rouget had killed too many people not to know when his own end was
nigh; and his notary, finding him on his death-bed, draped as it were,
in the mantle of encyclopaedic philosophy, pressed him to make a
provision in favor of the young girl, then seventeen years old.

"So