honour: and there is something in that!"

"A man of honour!" the bishop muttered to himself, with a little
petulance and hesitation. "A man of honour! Yes, I believe it!"
Then, after an interval, "Come, Monsieur," he said gently, "your case
is not as desperate as you suppose. My Aliette is one of those young
enthusiasts through whom Heaven sometimes works miracles." And Bernard
refusing any encouragement of that hope (the "very roots of faith are
dead" in him for ever) "since you think that," the bishop answers, "it
is honest to say so. But God has His ways!"

Soon after, the journal comes to an end with that peculiar crisis in
Bernard's life which had suggested the writing of it. Aliette, with
the approval of her family, has given him her hand. Bernard accepts it
with the full purpose of doing all he can to make his wife as happy as
she is charming and beloved. The virginal first period of their
married life in their dainty house in Paris--the pure and beautiful
picture of the mother, the father, and at last the child, a little
[230] girl, Jeanne--is presented with M. Feuillet's usual grace.
Certain embarrassments succeed; the development of what was ill-matched
in their union; but still with mutual loyalty. A far-reaching
acquaintance with, and reflection upon, the world and its ways,
especially the Parisian world, has gone into the apparently slight
texture of these pages. The accomplished playwright may be recognised
in the skilful touches with which M. Feuillet, unrivalled, as his
regular readers know, in his power of breathing higher notes into the
frivolous prattle of fashionable French life, develops the tragic germ
in the elegant, youthful household. Amid the distractions of a
society, frivolous, perhaps vulgar, Aliette's mind is still set on
greater things; and, in spite of a thousand rude discouragements, she
maintains her generous hope for Bernard's restoration to faith. One
day, a little roughly, he bids her relinquish that dream finally. She
looks at him with the moist, suppliant eyes of some weak animal at bay.
Then his native goodness returns. In a softened tone he owns himself
wrong.

"As to conversions;--no one must be despaired of. Do you remember M.
de Rance? He lived in your favourite age;--M. de Rance. Well! before
he became the reformer of La Trappe he had been a worldling like me,
and a great sceptic--what people called a libertine. Still he became a
saint! It is true he had