The insupportable Professor spoke a great deal longer, adding indecorum to awkwardness, and impertinence to incivility, accumulating incongruities, despising what is respectable, respecting what is despicable; but no one listened to him further.

During this time in a room that was simple without grace, a room sad for the want of love, a room which, like all young girls’ rooms, had something of the cold atmosphere of a place of waiting about it, Eveline Clarence turned over the pages of club annuals and prospectuses of charities in order to obtain from them some acquaintance with society.  Being convinced that her mother, shut up in her own intellectual but poor world, could neither bring her out or push her into prominence, she decided that she herself would seek the best means of winning a husband.  At once calm and obstinate, without dreams or illusions, and regarding marriage as but a ticket of admission or a passport, she kept before her mind a clear notion of the hazards, difficulties, and chances of her enterprise.  She had the art of pleasing and a coldness of temperament that enabled her to turn it to its fullest advantage.  Her weakness lay in the fact that she was dazzled by anything that had an aristocratic air.

When she was alone with her mother she said: 

“Mamma, we will go to-morrow to Father Douillard’s retreat.”

II.  THE CHARITY OF ST. ORBEROSIA

Every Friday evening at nine o’clock the choicest of Alcan society assembled in the aristocratic church of St. Mael for the Reverend Father Douillard’s retreat.  Prince and Princess des Boscenos, Viscount and Viscountess Olive, M. and Madame Bigourd, Monsieur and Madame de La Trumelle were never absent.  The flower of the aristocracy might be seen there, and fair Jewish baronesses also adorned it by their presence, for the Jewish baronesses of Alca were Christians.

This retreat, like all religious retreats, had for its object to procure for those living in the world opportunities for recollection so that they might think of their eternal salvation.  It was also intended to draw down upon so man noble and illustrious families the benediction of L. Orberosia, who loves the Penguins.  The Reverend Father Douillard strove for the completion of his task with a truly apostolical zeal.  He hoped to restore the prerogatives of St. Orberosia as the patron saint of Penguinia and to dedicate to her a monumental church on one of the hills that dominate the city.  His efforts had been crowned with great success, and for the accomplishing of this national enterprise he had already united more than a hundred thousand adherents and collected more than twenty millions of francs.

It was in the choir of St. Mael’s that St. Orberosia’s new shrine, shining with gold, sparkling with precious stones, and surrounded by tapers and flowers, had been erected.

The following account may be read in the “History of the Miracles of the Patron Saint of Alca” by the Abbe Plantain: