“And she would immediately present the old woman with one of her tracts which were destined to convert the universe.

“In, the village she was not liked.  In fact, the schoolmaster having pronounced her an atheist, a kind of stigma attached to her.  The cure, who had been consulted by Madame Lecacheur, responded: 

“’She is a heretic, but God does not wish the death of the sinner, and I believe her to be a person of pure morals.’

“These words, ‘atheist,’ ‘heretic,’ words which no one can precisely define, threw doubts into some minds.  It was asserted, however, that this English woman was rich and that she had passed her life in travelling through every country in the world because her family had cast her off.  Why had her family cast her off?  Because of her impiety, of course!

“She was, in fact, one of those people of exalted principles; one of those opinionated puritans, of which England produces so many; one of those good and insupportable old maids who haunt the tables d’hote of every hotel in Europe, who spoil Italy, poison Switzerland, render the charming cities of the Mediterranean uninhabitable, carry everywhere their fantastic manias their manners of petrified vestals, their indescribable toilets and a certain odor of india-rubber which makes one believe that at night they are slipped into a rubber casing.

“Whenever I caught sight of one of these individuals in a hotel I fled like the birds who see a scarecrow in a field.

“This woman, however, appeared so very singular that she did not displease me.

“Madame Lecacheur, hostile by instinct to everything that was not rustic, felt in her narrow soul a kind of hatred for the ecstatic declarations of the old maid.  She had found a phrase by which to describe her, a term of contempt that rose to her lips, called forth by I know not what confused and mysterious mental ratiocination.  She said:  ’That woman is a demoniac.’  This epithet, applied to that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to me irresistibly droll.  I myself never called her anything now but ‘the demoniac,’ experiencing a singular pleasure in pronouncing aloud this word on perceiving her.

“One day I asked Mother Lecacheur:  ’Well, what is our demoniac about to-day?’

“To which my rustic friend replied with a shocked air: 

“’What do you think, sir?  She picked up a toad which had had its paw crushed and carried it to her room and has put it in her washbasin and bandaged it as if it were a man.  If that is not profanation I should like to know what is!’

“On another occasion, when walking along the shore she bought a large fish which had just been caught, simply to throw it back into the sea again.  The sailor from whom she had bought it, although she paid him handsomely, now began to swear, more exasperated, indeed, than if she had put her hand into his pocket and taken his money.  For more than a month he could not speak of the circumstance without becoming furious and denouncing it as an outrage.  Oh, yes!  She was indeed a demoniac, this Miss Harriet, and Mother Lecacheur must have had an inspiration in thus christening her.