elated by the kisses of the breeze. She had relished the long mornings of
idleness in bed, recollecting, in order to double her enjoyment, that at
that very moment the friends she had left at school, were turning pale
beneath the smoky lamps of the school-room; and in the evening she read the
delightful novels of Droz by her lamp, and thought with pleasure that her
same friends had been in bed for a long while. Then she closed her book,
and reflected again and said with a yawn: "They are asleep, poor little
things, and I am awake, I am free to be awake."

And she wrote long letters to them in which she told them, how happy she
was, assuming a charming air of superiority, treating them as children who
knew nothing yet of life. But she thought that she knew nothing more of it
herself, and yearned to be instructed.

She felt that there was something wanting, and that her father's affection
was not enough to fill her heart.

She had looked well about her, but she had found only what was commonplace.
No more young clerks with curled hair, who darted inflammatory looks at the
women from behind the shop-windows, no Saint-Cyrion with delicate
moustache, no doctors of twenty-five or poets of eighteen. Besides her
father and the notabilities of the village, middle-aged dignitaries,
nothing but peasants only.

She held the belief which all girls hold; a nice little belief very
convenient and very simple: the sweet Jesus, the Paschal Lamb, and the
Immaculate Conception. Around this trio gravitated all the rest, but
graceful and light as the mists which float at sun-rise.

Therefore the Captain had not thought it his duty to disappoint his