"Wouldn't it be well to show that book to Monsieur le vicaire before
you read it?" said her mother, to whom all printed books were a sealed
mystery.

"I thought of it," answered Veronique.

The girl passed the whole night reading the story,--one of the most
touching bits of writing in the French language. The picture of mutual
love, half Biblical and worthy of the earlier ages of the world,
ravaged her heart. A hand--was it divine or devilish?--raised the veil
which, till then, had hidden nature from her. The Little Virgin still
existing in the beautiful young girl thought on the morrow that her
flowers had never been so beautiful; she heard their symbolic
language, she looked into the depths of the azure sky with a fixedness
that was almost ecstasy, and tears without a cause rolled down her
cheeks.

In the life of all women there comes a moment when they comprehend
their destiny,--when their hitherto mute organization speaks
peremptorily. It is not always a man, chosen by some furtive
involuntary glance, who awakens their slumbering sixth sense; oftener
it is some unexpected sight, the aspect of scenery, the _coup d'oeil_
of religious pomp, the harmony of nature's perfumes, a rosy dawn
veiled in slight mists, the winning notes of some divinest music, or
indeed any unexpected motion within the soul or within the body. To
this lonely girl, buried in that old house, brought up by simple, half
rustic parents, who had never heard an unfit word, whose pure
unsullied mind had never known the slightest evil thought,--to the
angelic pupil of Soeur Marthe and the vicar of Saint-Etienne the
revelation of love, the life of womanhood, came from the hand of