wed their
mother's example. Beneath their outer garment, which was relatively
handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the richest peasant
women. On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were really pretty,
obtained, Heaven knows how! For one thing, the men-servants at Les
Aigues sold to them, at prices that were easily paid, the cast-off
clothing of the lady's-maids, which, after sweeping the streets of Paris
and being made over to fit Marie and Catherine, appeared triumphantly in
the precincts of the Grand-I-Vert. These girls, bohemians of the valley,
received not one penny in money from their parents, who gave them
food only, and the wretched pallets on which they slept with their
grandmother in the barn, where their brothers also slept, curled up in
the hay like animals. Neither father nor mother paid any heed to this
propinquity.

The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for. In
the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it;
the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of
old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was
simply one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe Brossette,
after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this pregnant remark
to his bishop:--

"Monseigneur, when I observe the stress that the peasantry lay on
their poverty, I realize how they fear to lose that excuse for their
immorality."

Though everybody knew that the family had no principles and no scruples,
nothing was ever said against the morals of the Grand-I-Vert. At the
beginning of this book it is necessary to explain, once for all, to
persons accustomed to the decencies of middle-class life, that the
peasants have no decency in their domestic habits and customs. They
make no appeal to morality when their daughters are seduced, unless the
seducer is rich and timid. Children, until the State takes possession
of them, are used either as capital or as instruments of convenience.
Self-interest has become, specially since 1789, the sole motive of the
masses; they never ask if an action is legal or immoral, but only if it
is profitable. Morality, which is not to be confounded with religion,
begins only at a certain competence,--just as one sees, in a higher
sphere, how delicacy blossoms in the soul when fortune decorates
the furniture. A positively moral and upright man is rare among the
peasantry. Do you ask why? Among t