first she had had her parents to take care of, but when they died she had
been left entirely alone in the great _château_, and devoted herself to
prayer and works of charity among the villagers and country people.

"Ah! she is good--she is a saint Mademoiselle," the poor people always
said when speaking of her; but they also always looked a little
awe-stricken when she appeared, and never were sorry when she left them.

She was a tall woman, with a pale, rigid, handsome face, which never
smiled. She did nothing but good deeds, but however grateful her
pensioners might be, nobody would ever have dared to dream of loving her.
She was just and cold and severe. She wore always a straight black serge
gown, broad bands of white linen, and a rosary and crucifix at her waist.
She read nothing but religious works and legends of the saints and
martyrs, and adjoining her private apartments was a little stone chapel,
where the servants said she used to kneel on the cold floor before the
altar and pray for hours in the middle of the night.

The little _curé_ of the village, who was plump and comfortable, and who
had the kindest heart and the most cheerful soul in the world, used to
remonstrate with her, always in a roundabout way, however, never quite as
if he were referring directly to herself.

"One must not let one's self become the stone image of goodness," he said
once. "Since one is really of flesh and blood, and lives among flesh and
blood, that is not best. No, no; it is not best."

But Mademoiselle de Rochemont never seemed exactly of flesh and
blood--she was more like a marble female saint who had descended from her
pedestal to walk upon the earth.