grading practices and shameful superstitions, and instead of being
the fruitful animating springs of moral and social progress, become the
passive instruments, the unfruitful _things_ of the priest, that is to say
the agents of reaction.

It is they who have caused thinkers to doubt the noble part which woman is
called to fulfil; who have compelled Proudhon to say: "Woman is the
desolation of the just," and that other apostle of socialism, Bebel, that
she is incapable of helping in the reconstitution of Society:

"_Slave of every prejudice, affected by every moral and physical malady,
she will be the stumbling-block of progress. With her must be used, morally
certainly, perhaps physically, the peremptory reason to the slaves of the
old race: The Stick_!" We are far from the divine book of Michelet, _Love_.

No, do not let us beat woman, even with a rose, as the Arab proverb says.
She is a sick child, foolishly spoiled, who requires only to be cured and
reformed by another education. The Comtesse was not like this. Skilful and
intelligent, she knew _what talking meant_, and how to read in wise men's
eyes and between the lines of letters. Therefore, she had learnt in good
time, how to bring together two things which the profane suppose to be so
opposed to one another, and which form the secret of the Temple: _Religion
and pleasure_.

"And she was quite right," Veronica would have said, "for how can pleasure
hurt God."

LXXXIII.

CONVENTICLE.

"Je, dist Panurge, me trouve bien
du conseil des femmes, et mesmement
de vieilles."

RABELAIS (_Panurge_).

They took a light repast, and it was decided that Marcel should repair to
the Palace that very day.

--There is no time to lose, said the Comtesse. The Cure of St. Marie is
much coveted, and we have competitors in earnest. There is firstly the Abbe
Matou, who is supported by all the fraternity of the Sacred Heart; he is
young, active, wheedling and honey-tongued. He is the man I should choose
myself, if I did not know you. He has had certainly a funny little story
formerly with some communicants, but that is passed and gone, and as, after
all, he is an intelligent priest and very Ultramontane, Monseigneur would
he desirous of nominating him in order to rehabilitate him in public
esteem. He is dangerous.

Now we have little Kock. He has rendered important services. But he is the
son of an inn-keeper, and he has common manners. Let us pass him by. Th