by in carriages, they would enter the chapel and engage in devotions
so as not to meet them. This was done not so much to avoid regretting
the loss of goods, of which they had made a willing sacrifice to God,
as from a feeling of delicacy lest their presence might embarrass
these _parvenus_. A few years later the parts were completely
reversed, but the hospital still continued to receive all sorts
of wreckage. It was there that your uncle, Pierre Renan, who led
a vagabond life, and passed all his time in taverns reading to the
tipplers the books he borrowed from us, died; and old Système, whom
the priests disliked though he was a very good man; and Gode, the old
sorceress, who, the day after you were born, went to tell your fortune
in the Lake of the Minihi; and Marguerite Calvez, who perjured herself
and was struck down with consumption the very day she heard that St.
Yves had been implored to bring about her death within the year."[1]

"And who," I asked her, "was that mad woman who used to sit under the
screen, and of whom Guyomar and myself were so afraid?"

Reflecting a moment to remember whom I meant, she replied, "Why, she
was the daughter of the flax-crusher."

"Who was he?"

"I have never told you that story. It is too old-fashioned to be
understood at the present day. Since I have come to Paris there are
many things to which I have never alluded.... These country nobles
were so much respected. I always considered them to be the genuine
noblemen. It would be no use telling this to the Parisians, they would
only laugh at me. They think that their city is everything, and in my
view they are very narrow-minded. People have no idea in the present