r to be a person of pure morals.'

"These words, 'atheist,' 'heretic,' words which no one can precisely
define, threw doubts into some minds. It was asserted, however,
that this English woman was rich and that she had passed her life in
travelling through every country in the world because her family had
cast her off. Why had her family cast her off? Because of her impiety,
of course!

"She was, in fact, one of those people of exalted principles; one of
those opinionated puritans, of which England produces so many; one of
those good and insupportable old maids who haunt the tables d'hote of
every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the
charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere
their fantastic manias their manners of petrified vestals, their
indescribable toilets and a certain odor of india-rubber which makes one
believe that at night they are slipped into a rubber casing.

"Whenever I caught sight of one of these individuals in a hotel I fled
like the birds who see a scarecrow in a field.

"This woman, however, appeared so very singular that she did not
displease me.

"Madame Lecacheur, hostile by instinct to everything that was not
rustic, felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic
declarations of the old maid. She had found a phrase by which to
describe her, a term of contempt that rose to her lips, called forth by
I know not what confused and mysterious mental ratiocination. She said:
'That woman is a demoniac.' This epithet, applied to that austere and
sentimental creature, seemed to me irresistibly droll. I myself never
called her anything now but 'the demoniac,' experiencing a singular
pleasure in pronouncing aloud this word on perceiving her.

"One day I asked Mother Lecacheur: 'Well, what is our demoniac about
to-day?'

"To which my rustic friend replied with a shocked air:

"'What do you think, sir? She picked up a toad which had had its paw
crushed and carried it to her room and has put it in her washbasin and
bandaged it as if it were a man. If that is not profanation I should
like to know what is!'

"On another occasion, when walking along the shore she bought a large
fish which had just been caught, simply to throw it back into the sea
again. The sailor from whom she had bought it, although she paid him
handsomely, now began to swear, more exasperated, indeed, than if she
had put her hand into his pocket and taken his money. For m