d reached at
a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre
hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened
to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of
the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of
the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not
confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel
herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her
brow.

The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with
great astonishment that Mademoiselle Rouault seemed to be slipping
from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats,
novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to
saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of
the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined
horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This
nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the
church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the
songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against
the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing
antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school,
no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she
had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.

Emma, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the
servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent.
When Charles came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself
quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to
feel.

But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance
caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe
that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a
great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies
of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived
was the happiness she had dreamed.

Chapter Seven

She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time
of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full
sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those
lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of
laziness most suave. I