in Paris, snares await you everywhere, and the end is sorrow.  Wherever I set my foot, the ground round about me seemed to burn.  My readiness to acquiesce was considered weakness though if I unsheathed my talons, like a man conscious that he may some day wield the thunderbolts of power, I was thought ill-natured; to others, the delightful laughter that ceases with youth, and in which in later years we are almost ashamed to indulge, seemed absurd, and they amused themselves at my expense.  People may be bored nowadays, but none the less they expect you to treat every trivial topic with befitting seriousness.

“A hateful era!  You must bow down before mediocrity, frigidly polite mediocrity which you despise—­and obey.  On more mature reflection, I have discovered the reasons of these glaring inconsistencies.  Mediocrity is never out of fashion, it is the daily wear of society; genius and eccentricity are ornaments that are locked away and only brought out on certain days.  Everything that ventures forth beyond the protection of the grateful shadow of mediocrity has something startling about it.

“So, in the midst of Paris, I led a solitary life.  I had given up everything to society, but it had given me nothing in return; and my child was not enough to satisfy my heart, because I was not a woman.  My life seemed to be growing cold within me; I was bending under a load of secret misery when I met the woman who was to make me know the might of love, the reverence of an acknowledged love, love with its teeming hopes of happiness—­in one word—­love.

“I had renewed my acquaintance with that old friend of my father’s who had once taken charge of my affairs.  It was in his house that I first met her whom I must love as long as life shall last.  The longer we live, sir, the more clearly we see the enormous influence of ideas upon the events of life.  Prejudices, worthy of all respect, and bred by noble religious ideas, occasioned my misfortunes.  This young girl belonged to an exceeding devout family, whose views of Catholicism were due to the spirit of a sect improperly styled Jansenists, which, in former times, caused troubles in France.  You know why?”

“No,” said Genestas.

“Jansenius, Bishop of Ypres, once wrote a book which was believed to contain propositions at variance with the doctrines of the Holy See.  When examined at a later date, there appeared to be nothing heretical in the wording of the text, some authors even went so far as to deny that the heretical propositions had any real existence.  However it was, these insignificant disputes gave rise to two parties in the Gallican Church—­the Jansenists and the Jesuits.  Great men were found in either camp, and a struggle began between two powerful bodies.  The Jansenists affected an excessive purity of morals and of doctrine, and accused the Jesuits of preaching a relaxed morality.  The Jansenists, in fact, were Catholic Puritans, if two contradictory terms