was relatively handsome, they wore linen much finer than that of the
richest peasant women. On fete-days they appeared in dresses that were
really pretty, obtained, Heaven knows how! For one thing, the
men-servants at Les Aigues sold to them, at prices that were easily
paid, the cast-off clothing of the lady's-maids, which, after sweeping
the streets of Paris and being made over to fit Marie and Catherine,
appeared triumphantly in the precincts of the Grand-I-Vert. These
girls, bohemians of the valley, received not one penny in money from
their parents, who gave them food only, and the wretched pallets on
which they slept with their grandmother in the barn, where their
brothers also slept, curled up in the hay like animals. Neither father
nor mother paid any heed to this propinquity.

The iron age and the age of gold are more alike than we think for. In
the one nothing aroused vigilance; in the other, everything rouses it;
the result to society is, perhaps, very much the same. The presence of
old Mother Tonsard, which was more a necessity than a precaution, was
simply one immorality the more. And thus it was that the Abbe
Brossette, after studying the morals of his parishioners, made this
pregnant remark to his bishop:--

"Monseigneur, when I observe the stress that the peasantry lay on
their poverty, I realize how they fear to lose that excuse for their
immorality."

Though everybody knew that the family had no principles and no
scruples, nothing was ever said against the morals of the
Grand-I-Vert. At the beginning of this book it is necessary to
explain, once for all, to persons accustomed to the decencies of
middle-class life, that the peasants have no decency in their