civilization, she was better than many plainer ones, and I do not think
that the sum total of her errors could weigh heavy on her conscience.
Perhaps she was culpable in thought; but if the imagination was sick, the
heart was good and sound. She had not sinned, but she said to herself, that
sinning would be sweet!

Well! there is no great crime there. Does not every woman love instinctive
pleasure? Among them there are few stoics. They who are so, are so by
compulsion, and so they cannot make a virtue of it. Suzanne loved pleasure
then, and she loved it the more because she only knew it by hear-say.

The education of Saint-Denis had contributed no little to develop her
natural disposition.

Everything has been said about the _House of the Legion of Honour_, about
its curious system of education with regard to young girls, nearly all of
them poor, and brought up as if, when they left school, they would find an
income of £2,000 a year.

It is known that in this establishment intended for the daughters of
officers _with no fortune_, everything is taught except that which is most
necessary for a woman to know. They leave having a barren, superficial
education, principally composed of words, and in which consequently, to the
exclusion of the intelligence and the heart, the memory plays the principal
part; none of the childish rules of ceremonial are spared them, none of the
frivolous accomplishments indispensable for access to a world which, for
the greater part, they will never be invited to see; and they return to
their father's humble roof, dreaming of balls, fêtes, equipages, hotels,
drawing-rooms, the only surroundings in which they could profitably display
the useless accomplishments with which they have been endowed, but also