Pope Pius VII. came at once, strongly
condemning the wife's recalcitrancy and blaming the priest. This letter,
a chapter on conjugal duties, might have been dictated by the spirit of
Fenelon, whose grace and tenderness pervaded every line.

"A wife is right to go wherever her husband may take her. Even if she
sins by his command, she will not be ultimately held answerable." These
two sentences of the Pope's homily only made Madame de Granville and her
director accuse him of irreligion.

But before this letter had arrived, Granville had discovered the strict
observance of fast days that his wife forced upon him, and gave his
servants orders to serve him with meat every day in the year. However
much annoyed his wife might be by these commands, Granville, who cared
not a straw for such indulgence or abstinence, persisted with manly
determination.

Is it not an offence to the weakest creature that can think at all to
be compelled to do, by the will of another, anything that he would
otherwise have done simply of his own accord? Of all forms of tyranny,
the most odious is that which constantly robs the soul of the merit of
its thoughts and deeds. It has to abdicate without having reigned. The
word we are readiest to speak, the feelings we most love to express, die
when we are commanded to utter them.

Ere long the young man ceased to invite his friends, to give parties or
dinners; the house might have been shrouded in crape. A house where the
mistress is a bigot has an atmosphere of its own. The servants, who are,
of course, under her immediate control, are chosen among a class who
call themselves pious, and who have an unmistakable physiognomy. Just
as the jolliest fellow alive, when he joins the _gendarmerie_, has the
countenance of a gendarme, so those who give themselves over to the
habit of lowering their eyes and preserving a sanctimonious mien clothes
them in a livery of hypocrisy which rogues can affect to perfection.

And besides, bigots constitute a sort of republic; they all know each
other; the servants they recommend and hand on from one to another are
a race apart, and preserved by them, as horse-breeders will admit
no animal into their stables that has not a pedigree. The more the
impious--as they are thought--come to understand a household of bigots,
the more they perceive that everything is stamped with an indescribable
squalor; they find there, at the same time, an appearance of avarice and
mystery, a