alks, and listened to her reminiscences of childhood. The young girl
recognized herself in these tales, and was astonished to find that her
mother's thoughts and hopes had been the same as hers; for every one
imagines that he is the first to experience those feelings which made
the hearts of our first parents beat quicker, and which will continue to
exist in human hearts till the end of time.

These tales, often interrupted for several seconds by the baroness's
want of breath, were told as slowly as she walked, and Jeanne let her
thoughts run on to the happy future, without waiting to hear the end of
her mother's anecdotes.

One afternoon, as they were resting on the seat at the bottom of the
walk, they saw a fat priest coming towards them from the other end of
the avenue. He bowed, put on a smiling look, bowed again when he was
about three feet off, and cried:

"Well, Madame la baronne, and how are we to-day?"

He was the cure of the parish.

The baroness, born in a philosophical century and brought up in
revolutionary times by a father who did not believe very much in
anything, did not often go to church, although she liked priests with
the sort of religious instinct that most women have. She had forgotten
all about the Abbe Picot, her cure, and her face colored when she saw
him. She began to make excuses for not having gone to see him, but the
good-natured priest did not seem at all put out. He looked at Jeanne,
complimented her on her good looks, sat down, put his hat on his knees,
and wiped his forehead.

He was a very fat, red-faced man, who perspired very freely. Every
minute he drew an enormous, checked handkerchief from his pocket and
wiped his face and neck; but he had hardly put it back again when fresh
drops appeared on his skin and, falling on his cassock, made the dust on
it into little, round spots. He was a true country-priest, lively and
tolerant, talkative and honest. He told anecdotes, talked about the
peasants, and did not seem to have noticed that his two parishioners had
not been to mass; for the baroness always tried to reconcile her vague
ideas of religion to her indolence, and Jeanne was too happy at having
left the convent, where she had been sickened of holy ceremonies, to
think about going to church.

The baron joined them. His pantheistic religion made him indifferent to
doctrine, and he asked the abbe, whom he knew by sight, to stay to
dinner. The priest had the art of pleasing ever