By a strange chance, not inexplicable, however, in a girl of Spanish origin, Madame Claes was uneducated.  She knew how to read and write, but up to the age of twenty, at which time her parents withdrew her from a convent, she had read none but ascetic books.  On her first entrance into the world, she was eager for pleasure and learned only the flimsy art of dress; she was, moreover, so deeply conscious of her ignorance that she dared not join in conversation; for which reason she was supposed to have little mind.  Yet, the mystical education of a convent had one good result; it left her feelings in full force and her natural powers of mind uninjured.  Stupid and plain as an heiress in the eyes of the world, she became intellectual and beautiful to her husband.  During the first years of their married life, Balthazar endeavored to give her at least the knowledge that she needed to appear to advantage in good society:  but he was doubtless too late, she had no memory but that of the heart.  Josephine never forgot anything that Claes told her relating to themselves; she remembered the most trifling circumstances of their happy life; but of her evening studies nothing remained to her on the morrow.

This ignorance might have caused much discord between husband and wife, but Madame Claes’s understanding of the passion of love was so simple and ingenuous, she loved her husband so religiously, so sacredly, and the thought of preserving her happiness made her so adroit, that she managed always to seem to understand him, and it was seldom indeed that her ignorance was evident.  Moreover, when two persons love one another so well that each day seems for them the beginning of their passion, phenomena arise out of this teeming happiness which change all the conditions of life.  It resembles childhood, careless of all that is not laughter, joy, and merriment.  Then, when life is in full activity, when its hearths glow, man lets the fire burn without thought or discussion, without considering either the means or the end.

No daughter of Eve ever more truly understood the calling of a wife than Madame Claes.  She had all the submission of a Flemish woman, but her Spanish pride gave it a higher flavor.  Her bearing was imposing; she knew how to command respect by a look which expressed her sense of birth and dignity:  but she trembled before Claes; she held him so high, so near to God, carrying to him every act of her life, every thought of her heart, that her love was not without a certain respectful fear which made it keener.  She proudly assumed all the habits of a Flemish bourgeoisie, and put her self-love into making the home life liberally happy,—­preserving every detail of the house in scrupulous cleanliness, possessing nothing that did not serve the purposes of true comfort, supplying her table with the choicest food, and putting everything within those walls into harmony with the life of her heart.