e
they took in high things! How much more worthy they were than the
people who live now!" I tried to calm a little this retrospective
enthusiasm, so much to the prejudice of my contemporaries and of
myself. "Most truly, Mademoiselle," I said, "the age which you regret
had its rare merits--merits which I appreciate as you do. But then,
need one say that that society, so regular, so choice in appearance,
had, like our own, below the surface, its troubles, its disorders? I
see here many of the memoirs of that time. I can't tell exactly which
of them you may or may not have read, and so I feel a certain
difficulty in speaking."

She interrupted me: "Ah!" she said, with entire simplicity, "I
understand you. I have not read all you see here. But I have read
enough of it to know that my friends in that past age had, like those
who live now, their passions, their weaknesses, their mistakes. But,
as my father used to say to me, all that did but pass over a ground of
what was solid and serious, which always discovered itself again anew.
There were great faults then; but there were also great repentances.
There was a certain higher region to which everything conducted--even
what as evil." She blushed deeply: then rising a little suddenly, "A
long speech!" she said: "Forgive me! I am not usually so very
talkative. It is because my father was in question; and I should wish
his memory to be as dear and as venerable to all the rest of the world
as it is to me."

We pass over the many little dramatic intrigues and misunderstandings,
with the more or less adroit interferences of the uncle, which raise
and lower alternately Bernard's hopes. M. Feuillet has more than once
tried his hand with striking success in the portraiture of French
ecclesiastics. He has drawn none better than the Bishop of Saint-Meen,
uncle of Mademoiselle de Courteheuse, to whose interests he is devoted.
Bernard feels that to gain the influence of this prelate [227] would be
to gain his cause; and the opportunity for an interview comes.

Monseigneur de Courteheuse would seem to be little over fifty years of
age: he is rather tall, and very thin: the eyes, black and full of
life, are encircled by a ring of deep brown. His speech and gesture
are animated, and, at times, as if carried away. He adopts frequently
a sort of furious manner which on a sudden melts into the smile of an
honest man. He has beautiful silvery hair, flying in vagrant locks
ove