by the very secrecy in
which he buried them. Thereupon womanly compassion awoke within her, and
she felt increasing affection for that tall, pale fellow with feverish
eyes, who was consumed by grievous torments which he would confess to
none. No doubt she questioned Guillaume respecting her brother's sadness,
and he must have confided some of the truth to her in order that she
might help him to extricate Pierre from his sufferings, and give him back
some taste for life. The poor fellow always seemed so happy when she
treated him like a friend, a brother!

At last, one evening, on seeing his eyes full of tears as he gazed upon
the dismal twilight falling over Paris, she herself pressed him to
confide his trouble to her. And thereupon he suddenly spoke out,
confessing all his torture and the horrible void which the loss of faith
had left within him. Ah! to be unable to believe, to be unable to love,
to be nothing but ashes, to know of nothing certain by which he might
replace the faith that had fled from him! She listened in stupefaction.
Why, he must be mad! And she plainly told him so, such was her
astonishment and revolt at hearing such a desperate cry of wretchedness.
To despair, indeed, and believe in nothing and love nothing, simply
because a religious hypothesis had crumbled! And this, too, when the
whole, vast world was spread before one, life with the duty of living it,
creatures and things to be loved and succoured, without counting the
universal labour, the task which one and all came to accomplish!
Assuredly he must be mad, mad with the gloomiest madness; still she vowed
she would cure him.

From that time forward she felt the most compassionate affection for this
extraordinary young man, who had first embarrassed and afterwards
astonished her. She showed herself very gentle and gay with him; she
looked after him with the greatest skill and delicacy of heart and mind.
There had been certain similar features in their childhood; each had been
reared in the strictest religious views by a pious mother. But afterwards
how different had been their fates! Whilst he was struggling with his
doubts, bound by his priestly vows, she had grown up at the Lycee
Fenelon, where her father had placed her as soon as her mother died; and
there, far removed from all practice of religion, she had gradually
reached total forgetfulness of her early religious views. It was a
constant source of surprise for him to find that she had t