an Eastern slave.  With due deference to the makers of idylls and to philanthropists, the inhabitants of the provinces have very little idea of certain virtues; and their scruples are of a kind that is roused by self-interest, and not by any sentiment of the right or the becoming.  Raised from infancy with no prospect before them but poverty and ceaseless labor, they are led to consider anything that saves them from the hell of hunger and eternal toil as permissible, particularly if it is not contrary to any law.  Exceptions to this rule are rare.  Virtue, socially speaking, is the companion of a comfortable life, and comes only with education.

Thus the Rabouilleuse was an object of envy to all the young peasant-girls within a circuit of ten miles, although her conduct, from a religious point of view, was supremely reprehensible.  Flore, born in 1787, grew up in the midst of the saturnalias of 1793 and 1798, whose lurid gleams penetrated these country regions, then deprived of priests and faith and altars and religious ceremonies; where marriage was nothing more than legal coupling, and revolutionary maxims left a deep impression.  This was markedly the case at Issoudun, a land where, as we have seen, revolt of all kinds is traditional.  In 1802, Catholic worship was scarcely re-established.  The Emperor found it a difficult matter to obtain priests.  In 1806, many parishes all over France were still widowed; so slowly were the clergy, decimated by the scaffold, gathered together again after their violent dispersion.

In 1802, therefore, nothing was likely to reproach Flore Brazier, unless it might be her conscience; and conscience was sure to be weaker than self-interest in the ward of Uncle Brazier.  If, as everybody chose to suppose, the cynical doctor was compelled by his age to respect a child of fifteen, the Rabouilleuse was none the less considered very “wide awake,” a term much used in that region.  Still, some persons thought she could claim a certificate of innocence from the cessation of the doctor’s cares and attentions in the last two years of his life, during which time he showed her something more than coldness.

Old Rouget had killed too many people not to know when his own end was nigh; and his notary, finding him on his death-bed, draped as it were, in the mantle of encyclopaedic philosophy, pressed him to make a provision in favor of the young girl, then seventeen years old.

“So I do,” he said, cynically; “my death sets her at liberty.”

This speech paints the nature of the old man.  Covering his evil doings with witty sayings, he obtained indulgence for them, in a land where wit is always applauded,—­especially when addressed to obvious self-interest.  In those words the notary read the concentrated hatred of a man whose calculations had been balked by Nature herself, and who revenged himself upon the innocent object of an impotent love.  This opinion was confirmed to some extent by the obstinate resolution of the doctor to leave nothing to the Rabouilleuse, saying with a bitter smile, when the notary again urged the subject upon him,—­