as to play, the
arguments to be used, the maneuvers to be executed. They decided on the
plan of campaign, the stratagems they were to employ, and the surprise
attacks which were to reduce this human citadel and force it to receive
the enemy within its walls.

But Cornudet remained apart from the rest, taking no share in the plot.

So absorbed was the attention of all that Boule de Suif's entrance was
almost unnoticed. But the count whispered a gentle "Hush!" which made the
others look up. She was there. They suddenly stopped talking, and a vague
embarrassment prevented them for a few moments from addressing her. But
the countess, more practiced than the others in the wiles of the
drawing-room, asked her:

"Was the baptism interesting?"

The girl, still under the stress of emotion, told what she had seen and
heard, described the faces, the attitudes of those present, and even the
appearance of the church. She concluded with the words:

"It does one good to pray sometimes."

Until lunch time the ladies contented themselves with being pleasant to
her, so as to increase her confidence and make her amenable to their
advice.

As soon as they took their seats at table the attack began. First they
opened a vague conversation on the subject of self-sacrifice. Ancient
examples were quoted: Judith and Holofernes; then, irrationally enough,
Lucrece and Sextus; Cleopatra and the hostile generals whom she reduced
to abject slavery by a surrender of her charms. Next was recounted an
extraordinary story, born of the imagination of these ignorant
millionaires, which told how the matrons of Rome seduced Hannibal, his
lieutenants, and all his mercenaries at Capua. They held up to admiration
all those women who from time to time have arrested the victorious
progress of conquerors, made of their bodies a field of battle, a means
of ruling, a weapon; who have vanquished by their heroic caresses hideous
or detested beings, and sacrificed their chastity to vengeance and
devotion.

All was said with due restraint and regard for propriety, the effect
heightened now and then by an outburst of forced enthusiasm calculated to
excite emulation.

A listener would have thought at last that the one role of woman on earth
was a perpetual sacrifice of her person, a continual abandonment of
herself to the caprices of a hostile soldiery.

The two nuns seemed to hear nothing, and to be lost in thought. Boule de
Suif also was silent.

During t