We may see here how social vanities still governed Godefroid; for up to this visit of Madame de Cinq-Cygne he was still undecided; but he now resolved to give himself up, with or without conviction, to whatever Madame de la Chanterie and her friends might exact of him, in order to get affiliated with their order and initiated into their secrets, assuring himself that in that way he should find a career.

The next day he went to a book-keeper whom Madame de la Chanterie recommended, and arranged with him the hours at which they should work together.  His whole time was now employed.  The Abbe de Veze instructed him in the mornings; he was two hours a day with the book-keeper; and he spent the rest of his time between breakfast and dinner in doing imaginary commercial accounts which his master required him to write at home.

Some time passed thus, during which Godefroid felt the charm of a life in which each hour has its own employment.  The recurrence of a settled work at settled moments, regularity of action, is the secret of many a happy life; and it proves how deeply the founders of religious orders had meditated on the nature of man.  Godefroid, who had made up his mind to listen to the Abbe de Veze, began to have serious thoughts of a future life, and to find how little he knew of the real gravity of religious questions.

Moreover, from day to day Madame de la Chanterie, with whom he always remained for an hour after the second breakfast, allowed him to discover the treasures that were in her; he knew then that he never could have imagined a loving-kindness so broad and so complete.  A woman of Madame de la Chanterie’s apparent age no longer has the pettiness of younger women.  She is a friend who offers you all feminine refinements, who displays the graces, the choice attractions which nature inspires in a woman for man; she gives them, and no longer sells them.  Such a woman is either detestable or perfect; for her gifts are either not of the flesh or they are worthless.  Madame de la Chanterie was perfect.  She seemed never to have had a youth; her glance never told of a past.  Godefroid’s curiosity was far from being appeased by a closer and more intimate knowledge of this sublime nature; the discoveries of each succeeding day only redoubled his desire to learn the anterior life of a woman whom he now thought a saint.  Had she ever loved?  Had she been a wife,—­a mother?  Nothing about her was characteristic of an old maid; she displayed all the graces of a well-born woman; and an observer would perceive in her robust health, in the extraordinary phenomena of her physical preservation, a divine life, and a species of ignorance of the earthly existence.

Except the gay and cheery goodman Alain, all these persons had suffered; but Monsieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm of martyrdom to Madame de la Chanterie.  Nevertheless, the memory of her sorrows was so restrained by religious resignation, by her secret avocations, that she seemed to have been always happy.