at Semur.  The wonderful manifestation which interrupted our existence has passed absolutely as if it had never been.  We had not been twelve hours in our houses ere we had forgotten, or practically forgotten, our expulsion from them.  Even myself, to whom everything was so vividly brought home, I have to enter my wife’s room to put aside the curtain from little Marie’s picture, and to see and touch the olive branch which is there, before I can recall to myself anything that resembles the feeling with which I re-entered that sanctuary.  My grandfather’s bureau still stands in the middle of my library, where I found it on my return; but I have got used to it, and it no longer affects me.  Everything is as it was; and I cannot persuade myself that, for a time, I and mine were shut out, and our places taken by those who neither eat nor drink, and whose life is invisible to our eyes.  Everything, I say, is as it was—­every thing goes on as if it would endure for ever.  We know this cannot be, yet it does not move us.  Why, then, should the other move us?  A little time, we are aware, and we, too, shall be as they are—­as shadows, and unseen.  But neither has the one changed us, and neither does the other.  There was, for some time, a greater respect shown to religion in Semur, and a more devout attendance at the sacred functions; but I regret to say this did not continue.  Even in my own case—­I say it with sorrow—­it did not continue.  M. le Cure is an admirable person.  I know no more excellent ecclesiastic.  He is indefatigable in the performance of his spiritual duties; and he has, besides, a noble and upright soul.  Since the days when we suffered and laboured together, he has been to me as a brother.  Still, it is undeniable that he makes calls upon our credulity, which a man obeys with reluctance.  There are ways of surmounting this; as I see in Agnes for one, and in M. de Bois-Sombre for another.  My wife does not question, she believes much; and in respect to that which she cannot acquiesce in, she is silent.  ’There are many things I hear you talk of, Martin, which are strange to me,’ she says, ’of myself I cannot believe in them; but I do not oppose, since it is possible you may have reason to know better than I; and so with some things that we hear from M. le Cure.’  This is how she explains herself—­but she is a woman.  It is a matter of grace to yield to our better judgment.  M. de Bois-Sombre has another way. ‘Ma foi,’ he says, ’I have not the time for all your delicacies, my good people; I have come to see that these things are for the advantage of the world, and it is not my business to explain them.  If M. le Cure attempted to criticise me in military matters, or thee, my excellent Martin, in affairs of business, or in the culture of your vines, I should think him not a wise man; and in like manner, faith and religion, these are his concern.’  Felix de Bois Sombre is an excellent fellow; but he smells a little of the mousquetaire.  I, who am neither a soldier nor a woman, I have hesitations.  Nevertheless, so long as I am Maire of Semur, nothing less than the most absolute respect shall ever be shown to all truly religious persons, with whom it is my earnest desire to remain in sympathy and fraternity, so far as that may be.