“But,” the abbe would say to him, “if all men would be so, you must admit that society would be regenerated; there would be no more misery.  To be benevolent after your fashion one must needs be a great philosopher; you rise to your principles through reason, you are a social exception; whereas it suffices to be a Christian to make us benevolent in ours.  With you, it is an effort; with us, it comes naturally.”

“In other words, abbe, I think, and you feel,—­that’s the whole of it.”

However, at twelve years of age, Ursula, whose quickness and natural feminine perceptions were trained by her superior education, and whose intelligence in its dawn was enlightened by a religious spirit (of all spirits the most refined), came to understand that her godfather did not believe in a future life, nor in the immortality of the soul, nor in providence, nor in God.  Pressed with questions by the innocent creature, the doctor was unable to hide the fatal secret.  Ursula’s artless consternation made him smile, but when he saw her depressed and sad he felt how deep an affection her sadness revealed.  Absolute devotion has a horror of every sort of disagreement, even in ideas which it does not share.  Sometimes the doctor accepted his darling’s reasonings as he would her kisses, said as they were in the sweetest of voices with the purest and most fervent feeling.  Believers and unbelievers speak different languages and cannot understand each other.  The young girl pleading God’s cause was unreasonable with the old man, as a spoilt child sometimes maltreats its mother.  The abbe rebuked her gently, telling her that God had power to humiliate proud spirits.  Ursula replied that David had overcome Goliath.

This religious difference, these complaints of the child who wished to drag her godfather to God, were the only troubles of this happy life, so peaceful, yet so full, and wholly withdrawn from the inquisitive eyes of the little town.  Ursula grew and developed, and became in time the modest and religiously trained young woman whom Desire admired as she left the church.  The cultivation of flowers in the garden, her music, the pleasures of her godfather, and all the little cares she was able to give him (for she had eased La Bougival’s labors by doing everything for him),—­these things filled the hours, the days, the months of her calm life.  Nevertheless, for about a year the doctor had felt uneasy about his Ursula, and watched her health with the utmost care.  Sagacious and profoundly practical observer that he was, he thought he perceived some commotion in her moral being.  He watched her like a mother, but seeing no one about her who was worthy of inspiring love, his uneasiness on the subject at length passed away.

At this conjuncture, one month before the day when this drama begins, the doctor’s intellectual life was invaded by one of those events which plough to the very depths of a man’s convictions and turn them over.  But this event needs a succinct narrative of certain circumstances in his medical career, which will give, perhaps, fresh interest to the story.