hed at the refinement and
acuteness of perception which she had acquired since coming thither....
She remembered a glass of water which she had drunk at the door of a
little cafe on one of the first evenings, and which had seemed the most
delicious draught she had ever tasted. It struck her that warm countries
must possess all sorts of little felicities of soil and climate unknown
in colder ones, an enchanted _aqua felice_ trickling everywhere. And day
by day she felt the nothings of her life assuming an intensity of
pleasure and enjoyment that nothings have when one is in love." "In the
gardens of the Villa Borghese on those spring days she had hours of
singular well-being--a sort of sweet oppression, a relaxation which made
her happy: they were days whose temperature was like a tepid bath, with
warm whiffs of acacia and orange blossoms; a dusty sky; a sun which was
only an orange glow; a smothering of the sound of the distant bells; a
song of disconnected notes, as if the birds were tired; an atmosphere
where a line which might be taken for the flight of an insect proved to
be a drop of rain, which fell every five minutes without wetting you."
Her life, which is very solitary, consists principally of sightseeing,
study, the care and companionship of her child, and the revery which
hangs about existence in Italy like an exhalation from the ground.
Madame Gervaisais, brought up of course a French Catholic, has gradually
become a free-thinker of the serious kind, high-principled and earnest:
she is described as a woman of elevated mind and character, the force of
whose will and intelligence has kept her from being betrayed by a
naturally loving disposition, which has expended itself in friendship
and filial and maternal affection, the latter being her only passion.
The respectful distance which the author places between her and the rest
of the world is indicated by her first name never being mentioned: she
is only Madame Gervaisais. But she is not only a woman of reading: she
is an artist and a musician, and these tastes increase her
susceptibility to the soft masterdom of the place.

Rome is considered by those who make such matters their business a
peculiarly favorable spot for proselytizing: there is supposed to be an
afflatus from various sources which disposes the unbelieving soul to the
reception of the Church's teaching. The MM. de Goncourt understand this:
"What a vast embrace, what an immense holy contagion, is r