of the Cat and Racket commanded that they should be home by eleven
o'clock, the hour when balls and fetes begin to be lively. Thus their
pleasures, which seemed to conform very fairly to their father's
position, were often made insipid by circumstances which were part of
the family habits and principles.

As to their usual life, one remark will sufficiently paint it. Madame
Guillaume required her daughters to be dressed very early in the
morning, to come down every day at the same hour, and she ordered
their employments with monastic regularity. Augustine, however, had
been gifted by chance with a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness
of such a life. Her blue eyes would sometimes be raised as if to
pierce the depths of that gloomy staircase and those damp store-rooms.
After sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed to be
listening to remote, inarticulate revelations of the life of passion,
which accounts feelings as of higher value than things. And at such
moments her cheek would flush, her idle hands would lay the muslin
sewing on the polished oak counter, and presently her mother would say
in a voice, of which even the softest tones were sour, "Augustine, my
treasure, what are you thinking about?" It is possible that two
romances discovered by Augustine in the cupboard of a cook Madame
Guillaume had lately discharged--_Hippolyte Comte de Douglas_ and _Le
Comte de Comminges_--may have contributed to develop the ideas of the
young girl, who had devoured them in secret, during the long nights of
the past winter.

And so Augustine's expression of vague longing, her gentle voice, her
jasmine skin, and her blue eyes had lighted in poor Lebas' soul a
flame as ardent as it was reverent. From an easily understood caprice,
Augustine felt no affection for the orphan; perhaps she did not know