The noise of backgammon is intolerable to persons who do not know the game, which is really one of the most difficult that was ever invented.  Not to annoy his godchild, the extreme delicacy of whose organs and nerves could not bear, he thought, without injury the noise and the exclamations she did not know the meaning of, the abbe, old Jordy while living, and the doctor always waited till their child was in bed before they began their favorite game.  Sometimes the visitors came early when she was out for a walk, and the game would be going on when she returned; then she resigned herself with infinite grace and took her seat at the window with her work.  She had a repugnance to the game, which is really in the beginning very hard and unconquerable to some minds, so that unless it be learned in youth it is almost impossible to take it up in after life.

The night of her first communion, when Ursula came into the salon where her godfather was sitting alone, she put the backgammon-board before him.

“Whose throw shall it be?” she asked.

“Ursula,” said the doctor, “isn’t it a sin to make fun of your godfather the day of your first communion?”

“I am not making fun of you,” she said, sitting down.  “I want to give you some pleasure—­you who are always on the look-out for mine.  When Monsieur Chaperon was pleased with me he gave me a lesson in backgammon, and he has given me so many that now I am quite strong enough to beat you—­you shall not deprive yourself any longer for me.  I have conquered all difficulties, and now I like the noise of the game.”

Ursula won.  The abbe had slipped in to enjoy his triumph.  The next day Minoret, who had always refused to let Ursula learn music, sent to Paris for a piano, made arrangements at Fontainebleau for a teacher, and submitted to the annoyance that her constant practicing was to him.  One of poor Jordy’s predictions was fulfilled,—­the girl became an excellent musician.  The doctor, proud of her talent, had lately sent to Paris for a master, an old German named Schmucke, a distinguished professor who came once a week; the doctor willingly paying for an art which he had formerly declared to be useless in a household.  Unbelievers do not like music—­a celestial language, developed by Catholicism, which has taken the names of the seven notes from one of the church hymns; every note being the first syllable of the seven first lines in the hymn to Saint John.

The impression produced on the doctor by Ursula’s first communion though keen was not lasting.  The calm and sweet contentment which prayer and the exercise of resolution produced in that young soul had not their due influence upon him.  Having no reasons for remorse or repentance himself, he enjoyed a serene peace.  Doing his own benefactions without hope of a celestial harvest, he thought himself on a nobler plane than religious men whom he always accused for making, as he called it, terms with God.