had before her. If the whole truth had been known concerning the last
four years of her life in the convent, it would have considerably
astonished those good Catholics, if any such there be, who still believe
that convents are sacred retreats filled with the chaste and the devout.
Victorine Dubois at the age of eighteen, when her grandfather took her
home to his house, was as well versed a young woman in the ways and the
wiles of love-making as if she had been free to come and go all her
life. And that this knowledge had been gained surreptitiously, in stolen
moments and brief experiences at the expense of the whole of her
reverence for religion, the whole of her faith in men's purity, was not
poor Victorine's fault, only her misfortune; but the result was no less
disastrous to her morals. She went out of the convent as complete a
little hypocrite as ever told beads and repeated prayers. Only a
certain sort of infantile superstitiousness of nature remained in her,
and made her cling to the forms, in which, though she knew they did not
mean what they pretended, she suspected there might be some sort of
mechanical efficacy at last; like the partly undeceived disciple and
assistant of a master juggler, who is not quite sure that there may not
be a supernatural power behind some of the tricks. Beyond an overflowing
animal vitality, and a passion for having men make love to her, there
really was not much of Victorine. But it is wonderful how far these two
qualities can pass in a handsome woman for other and nobler ones. The
animal life so keen, intense, sensuous, can seem like cleverness, wit,
taste; the passion for receiving homage from men can make a woman
graceful, amiable, and alluring. Some of the greatest passions the world
has ever seen have been inspired in men by just such women as this.

Victorine was not without accomplishments and some smattering of
knowledge. She had read a good deal of French, and chattered it like
the true granddaughter of a Normandy _propriétaire_. She sang, in a