were indeed
a thing of ordinary existence, the simple yet delicate life of a French
country-house, the ideal life in an ideal France. Bernard is paying a
morning visit at the old turreted home of the "prehistoric" Courteheuse
family. Mademoiselle Aliette de Courteheuse, a studious girl, though a
bold and excellent rider [224] --Mademoiselle de Courteheuse, "with her
hair of that strange colour of fine ashes"--has conducted her visitor
to see the library:

One day she took me to see the library, rich in works of the
seventeenth century and in memoirs relating to that time. I remarked
there also a curious collection of engravings of the same period.
"Your father," I observed, "had a strong predilection for the age of
Louis the Fourteenth."

"My father lived in that age," she answered gravely. And as I looked
at her with surprise, and a little embarrassed, she added, "He made me
live there too, in his company."

And then the eyes of this singular girl filled with tears. She turned
away, took a few steps to suppress her emotion, and returning, pointed
me to a chair. Then seating herself on the step of the book-case, she
said, "I must explain my father to you."

She was half a minute collecting her thoughts: then, speaking with an
expansion of manner not habitual with her, hesitating, and blushing
deeply, whenever she was about to utter a word that might seem a shade
too serious for lips so youthful:--"My father," she proceeded, "died of
the consequences of a wound he had received at Patay. That may show
you that he loved his country, but he was no lover of his own age. He
possessed in the highest degree the love of order; and order was a
thing nowhere to be seen. He had a horror of disorder; and he saw it
everywhere. In those last years, especially, his reverence, his
beliefs, his tastes, all alike were ruffled to the point of actual
suffering, by whatever was done and said and written around him.
Deeply saddened by the conditions of the present time, he habituated
himself to find a refuge in the past, and the seventeenth century more
particularly offered him the kind of society in which he would have
wished to live--a society, well-ordered, polished, lettered, believing.
More and more he loved to shut himself up in it. More and more also he
loved to make the moral discipline and the literary tastes of that
favourite age prevail in his own household. You may even have remarked
that he carried his predilecti