of age, and then only four times a year in special houses. They were
not allowed to leave their mother's side without instructions as to
their behavior with their partners; and so severe were those
instructions that they dared say only yes or no during a dance. The
eye of the countess never left them, and she seemed to know from the
mere movement of their lips the words they uttered. Even the
ball-dresses of these poor little things were piously irreproachable;
their muslin gowns came up to their chins with an endless number of
thick ruches, and the sleeves came down to their wrists. Swathing in
this way their natural charms, this costume gave them a vague
resemblance to Egyptian hermae; though from these blocks of muslin
rose enchanting little heads of tender melancholy. They felt
themselves the objects of pity, and inwardly resented it. What woman,
however innocent, does not desire to excite envy?

No dangerous idea, unhealthy or even equivocal, soiled the pure pulp
of their brain; their hearts were innocent, their hands were horribly
red, and they glowed with health. Eve did not issue more innocent from
the hands of God than these two girls from their mother's home when
they went to the mayor's office and the church to be married, after
receiving the simple but terrible injunction to obey in all things two
men with whom they were henceforth to live and sleep by day and by
night. To their minds, nothing could be worse in the strange houses
where they were to go than the maternal convent.

Why did the father of these poor girls, the Comte de Granville, a wise
and upright magistrate (though sometimes led away by politics),
refrain from protecting the helpless little creatures from such
crushing despotism? Alas! by mutual understanding, about ten years
after marriage, he and his wife were separated while living under one