It would seem that the highest types of devotion are to be found in the families of the ministers and men of state, where the wife was intimately associated with the fortune and the success of her husband.  The Marquis de Croisy and his wife were married forty years; M. and Mme. de Maurepas lived together for fifty years, without being separated one day.  Instances are many in which reconciliations were effected after years of unfaithfulness; these seldom occurred, however, until the end of life was near.  The normal type of married life among the higher classes still remained one of most ideal and beautiful devotion, in spite of the great number of exceptions.

It must be observed that in the middle class the young girl grew up with the mother and was given her most tender care; surrounded with wholesome influences, she saw little or nothing of the world, and, the constant companion of her mother, developed much like the average young girl of to-day.  At the age of about eleven she was sent to a convent, where—­after having spent some time in the pension, where instruction in religion was given her—­she was instructed by the sisters for one year.

After her confirmation and her first communion, and the home visits to all the relatives, she was placed in a maison religieuse, where the sisters taught the daughters of the common people free of charge.  The young girl was also taught dancing, music, and other accomplishments of a like nature, but there was nothing of the feverish atmosphere of the convent in which the daughters of the nobility were reared; these institutions for the middle classes were peaceful, silent, and calm, fostering a serenity and quietude.  The days passed quickly, the Sundays being eagerly looked forward to because of the visits of the parents, who took their daughters for drives and walks and indulged them in other innocent diversions.  Such a life had its after effects:  the young girls grew up with a taste for system, discipline, piety, and for a rigid devotion, which often led them to an instinctive need of doctrine and sacrifice; consequently, in later life many turned to Jansenism.

However, the young girls of this class who were not thus educated, because their assistance was required at home, received an early training in social as well as in domestic affairs; they had a solid and practical, if uncouth, foundation, combined with a worldly and, often, a frivolous temperament.  To them many privileges were opened:  they were taken to the opera, to concerts and to balls, to the salons of painting, and it often happened that they developed a craving for the society to which only the nobly born demoiselle was admitted.  When this craving went too far, it frequently led to seduction by some of the chevaliers who make seduction a profession.