retain without appearing extraordinary at a period when educated women

were thought phenomenal. The house had been to her a convent, but with
more freedom, less enforced prayer,--a retreat where she had lived

beneath the eye of a pious old woman and the protection of her father,
the only man she had ever known. This absolutesolitude, necessitated

from her birth by the apparent feebleness of her constitution, had
been carefully maintained by Beauvouloir.

As Gabrielle grew up, such constant care and the purity of the
atmosphere had gradually strengthened her fragile youth. Still, the

wise physician did not deceive himself when he saw the pearly tints
around his daughter's eyes soften or darken or flush according to the

emotions that overcame her; the weakness of the body and the strength
of the soul were made plain to him in that one indication which his

long experience enabled him to understand. Besides this, Gabrielle's
celestial beauty made him fearful of attempts too common in times of

violence and sedition. Many reasons had thus induced the good father
to deepen the shadows and increase the solitude that surrounded his

daughter, whose excessive sensibility alarmed him; a passion, an
assault, a shock of any kind might wound her mortally. Though she

seldom deserved blame, a mere word of reproachovercame her; she kept
it in the depths of her heart, where it fostered a meditative

melancholy; she would turn away weeping, and wept long.
Thus the moral education of the young girl required no less care than

her physical education. The old physician had been compelled to cease
telling stories, such as all children love, to his daughter; the

impressions she received were too vivid. Wise through long practice,
he endeavored to develop her body in order to deaden the blows which a

soul so powerful gave to it. Gabrielle was all of life and love to her
father, his only heir, and never had he hesitated to procure for her

such things as might produce the results he aimed for. He carefully
removed from her knowledge books, pictures, music, all those creations

of art which awaken thought. Aided by his mother he interested
Gabrielle in manual exercises. Tapestry, sewing, lace-making, the

culture of flowers, household cares, the storage of fruits, in short,
the most material occupations of life, were the food given to the mind

of this charming creature. Beauvouloir brought her beautiful spinning-
wheels, finely-carved chests, rich carpets, pottery of Bernard de

Palissy, tables, prie-dieus, chairs beautifullywrought and covered
with precious stuffs, embroidered line and jewels. With an instinct

given by paternity, the old man always chose his presents among the
works of that fantastic order called arabesque, which, speaking

neither to the soul nor the senses, addresses the mind only by its
creations of pure fantasy.

Thus--singular to say!--the life which the hatred of a father had
imposed on Etienne d'Herouville, paternal love had induced Beauvouloir

to impose on Gabrielle. In both these children the soul was killing
the body; and without an absolutesolitude, ordained by cruelty for

one and procured by science for the other, each was likely to succumb,
--he to terror, she beneath the weight of a too keen emotion of love.

But, alas! instead of being born in a region of gorse and moor, in the
midst of an arid nature of hard and angular shapes, such as all great

painters have given as backgrounds to their Virgins, Gabrielle lived
in a rich and fertilevalley. Beauvouloir could not destroy the

harmonious grouping of the native woods, the graceful upspringing of
the wild flowers, the cool softness of the grassy slopes, the love

expressed in the intertwining growth of the clustering plants. Such
ever-living poesies have a language heard, rather than understood by

the poor girl, who yielded to vague misery among the shadows. Across
the misty ideas suggested by her long study of this beautiful

landscape, observed at all seasons and through all the variations of a
marine atmosphere in which the fogs of England come to die and the

sunshine of France is born, there rose within her soul a distant
light, a dawn which pierced the darkness in which her father kept her.

Beauvouloir had never withdrawn his daughter from the influence of
Divine love; to a deep admiration of nature she joined her girlish

adoration of the Creator, springing thus into the first way open to
the feelings of womanhood. She loved God, she loved Jesus, the Virgin

and the saints; she loved the Church and its pomps; she was Catholic
after the manner of Saint Teresa, who saw in Jesus an eternal spouse,

a continual marriage. Gabrielle gave herself up to this passion of
strong souls with so touching a simplicity that she would have

disarmed the most brutal seducer by the infantine naivete of her
language.

Whither was this life of innocence leading Gabrielle? How teach a mind
as pure as the water of a tranquil lake, reflecting only the azure of

the skies? What images should be drawn upon that spotless canvas?
Around which tree must the tendrils of this bind-weed twine? No father

has ever put these questions to himself without an inward shudder.
At this moment the good old man of science was riding slowly on his

mule along the roads from Herouville to Ourscamp (the name of the
village near which the estate of Forcalier was situated) as if he

wished to keep that way unending. The infinite love he bore his
daughter suggested a bold project to his mind. One only being in all

the world could make her happy; that man was Etienne. Assuredly, the
angelic son of Jeanne de Saint-Savin and the guileless daughter of

Gertrude Marana were twin beings. All other women would frighten and
kill the heir of Herouville; and Gabrielle, so Beauvouloir argued,

would perish by contact with any man in whom sentiments and external
forms had not the virgindelicacy of those of Etienne. Certainly the

poor physician had never dreamed of such a result; chance had brought
it forward and seemed to ordain it. But, under, the reign of Louis

XIII., to dare to lead a Duc d'Herouville to marry the daughter of a
bonesetter!

And yet, from this marriage alone was it likely that the lineage
imperiously demanded by the old duke would result. Nature had destined

these two rare beings for each other; God had brought them together by
a marvellous arrangement of events, while, at the same time, human

ideas and laws placed insuperable barriers between them. Though the
old man thought he saw in this the finger of God, and although he had

forced the duke to pass his word, he was seized with such fear, as his
thoughts reverted to the violence of that ungovernable nature, that he

returned upon his steps when, on reaching the summit of the hill above
Ourscamp, he saw the smoke of his own chimneys among the trees that

enclosed his home. Then, changing his mind once more, the thought of
the illegitimate relationshipdecided him; that consideration might

have great influence on the mind of his master. Once decided,
Beauvouloir had confidence in the chances and changes of life; it

might be that the duke would die before the marriage; besides, there
were many examples of such marriage; a peasant girl in Dauphine,

Francoise Mignot, had lately married the Marechal d'Hopital; the son
of the Connetable Anne de Montmorency had married Diane, daughter of

Henri II. and a Piedmontese lady named Philippa Duc.
During this mentaldeliberation in which paternal love measured all

probabilities and discussed both the good and the evil chances,
striving to foresee the future and weighing its elements, Gabrielle

was walking in the garden and gathering flowers for the vases of that
illustrious potter, who did for glaze what Benvenuto Cellini did for

metal. Gabrielle had put one of these vases, decorated with animals in
relief, on a table in the middle of the hall, and was filling it with

flowers to enliven her grandmother, and also, perhaps, to give form to
her own ideas. The noble vase, of the pottery called Limoges, was

filled, arranged, and placed upon the handsome table-cloth, and
Gabrielle was saying to her grandmother, "See!" when Beauvouloir

entered. The young girl ran to her father's arms. After this first
outburst of affection she wanted him to admire her bouquet; but the

old man, after glancing at it, cast a long, deep look at his daughter,
which made her blush.

"The time has come," he said to himself, understanding the language of
those flowers, each of which had doubtless been studied as to form and

as to color, and given its true place in the bouquet, where it
produced its own magical effect.

Gabrielle remained standing, forgetting the flower begun on her
tapestry. As he looked at his daughter a tear rolled from

Beauvouloir's eyes, furrowed his cheeks which seldom wore a serious
aspect, and fell upon his shirt, which, after the fashion of the day,

his open doublet exposed to view above his breeches. He threw off his
felt hat, adorned with an old red plume, in order to rub his hand over

his bald head. Again he looked at his daughter, who, beneath the brown
rafters of that leather-hung room, with its ebony furniture and

portieres of silkendamask, and its tall chimney-piece, the whole so
softly lighted, was still his very own. The poor father felt the tears

in his eyes and hastened to wipe them. A father who loves his daughter
longs to keep her always a child; as for him who can without deep pain

see her fall under the dominion of another man, he does not rise to
worlds superior, he falls to lowest space.

"What ails you, my son?" said his old mother, taking off her
spectacles, and seeking the cause of his silence and of the change in