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 thus escaped all
distress of mind at the thought of what might come after death, whereas
that same thought had so deeply tortured him. When they chatted together
and he expressed his astonishment at it, she frankly laughed, saying that
she had never felt any fear of hell, for she was certain that no hell
existed. And she added that she lived in all quietude, without hope of
going to any heaven, her one thought being to comply in a reasonable way
with the requirements and necessities of earthly life. It was, perhaps,
in some measure a matter of temperament with her; but it was also a
matter of education. Yet, whatever that education had been, whatever
knowledge she had acquired, she had remained very womanly and very
loving. There was nothing stern or masculine about her.

"Ah, my friend," she said one day to Pierre, "if you only knew how easy
it is for me to remain happy so long as I see those I love free from any
excessive suffering. For my own part I can always adapt myself to life. I
work and content myself no matter what may happen. Sorrow has only come
to me from others, for I can't help wishing that everybody should be
fairly happy, and there are some who won't.... I was for a long time
very poor, but I remained gay. I wish for nothing, except for things that
can't be purchased. Still, want is the