to encourage her studies, and she had a master who taught her to read, write, and cipher.  But the almost animal life of the true peasant had instilled into Flore such deep repugnance to the bitter cup of knowledge, that the doctor stopped her education at that point.  His intentions with regard to the child, whom he cleansed and clothed, and taught, and formed with a care which was all the more remarkable because he was thought to be utterly devoid of tenderness, were interpreted in a variety of ways by the cackling society of the town, whose gossip often gave rise to fatal blunders, like those relating to the birth of Agathe and that of Max.  It is not easy for the community of a country town to disentangle the truth from the mass of conjecture and contradictory reports to which a single fact gives rise.  The provinces insist—­as in former days the politicians of the little Provence at the Tuileries insisted—­on full explanations, and they usually end by knowing everything.  But each person clings to the version of the event which he, or she, likes best; proclaims it, argues it, and considers it the only true one.  In spite of the strong light cast upon people’s lives by the constant spying of a little town, truth is thus often obscured; and to be recognized, it needs the impartiality which historians or superior minds acquire by looking at the subject from a higher point of view.

“What do you suppose that old gorilla wants at his age with a little girl only fifteen years old?” society was still saying two years after the arrival of the Rabouilleuse.

“Ah! that’s true,” they answered, “his days of merry-making are long past.”

“My dear fellow, the doctor is disgusted at the stupidity of his son, and he persists in hating his daughter Agathe; it may be that he has been living a decent life for the last two years, intending to marry little Flore; suppose she were to give him a fine, active, strapping boy, full of life like Max?” said one of the wise heads of the town.

“Bah! don’t talk nonsense!  After such a life as Rouget and Lousteau led from 1770 to 1787, is it likely that either of them would have children at sixty-five years of age?  The old villain has read the Scriptures, if only as a doctor, and he is doing as David did in his old age; that’s all.”

“They say that Brazier, when he is drunk, boasts in Vatan that he cheated him,” cried one of those who always believed the worst of people.

“Good heavens! neighbor; what won’t they say at Issoudun?”

From 1800 to 1805, that is, for five years, the doctor enjoyed all the pleasures of educating Flore without the annoyances which the ambitions and pretensions of Mademoiselle de Romans inflicted, it is said, on Louis le Bien-Aime.  The little Rabouilleuse was so satisfied when she compared the life she led at the doctor’s with that she would have led at her uncle Brazier’s, that she yielded no doubt to the exactions of her master as if she had been