genius through one sweet book. To any other mind the book would have
offered no danger; to her it was worse in its effects than an obscene
tale. Corruption is relative. There are chaste and virgin natures
which a single thought corrupts, doing all the more harm because no
thought of the duty of resistance has occurred.

The next day Veronique showed the book to the good priest, who
approved the purchase; for what could be more childlike and innocent
and pure than the history of Paul and Virginia? But the warmth of the
tropics, the beauty of the scenery, the almost puerile innocence of a
love that seemed so sacred had done their work on Veronique. She was
led by the sweet and noble achievement of its author to the worship of
the Ideal, that fatal human religion! She dreamed of a lover like
Paul. Her thoughts caressed the voluptuous image of that balmy isle.
Childlike, she named an island in the Vienne, below Limoges and nearly
opposite to the Faubourg Saint-Martial, the Ile de France. Her mind
lived there in the world of fancy all young girls construct,--a world
they enrich with their own perfections. She spent long hours at her
window, looking at the artisans or the mechanics who passed it, the
only men whom the modest position of her parents allowed her to think
of. Accustomed, of course, to the idea of eventually marrying a man of
the people, she now became aware of instincts within herself which
revolved from all coarseness.

In such a situation she naturally made many a romance such as young
girls are fond of weaving. She clasped the idea--perhaps with the
natural ardor of a noble and virgin imagination--of ennobling one of
those men, and of raising him to the height where her own dreams led
her. She may have made a Paul of some young man who caught her eye,
merely to fasten her wild ideas on an actual being, as the mists of a