she was gentle, and she continued to live on, hoping always for the
happiness of maternity.

"Did you notice Madame Graslin this morning?" the women would say to
each other. "Marriage doesn't agree with her; she is actually green."

"Yes," some of them would reply; "but would you give your daughter to
a man like Graslin? No woman could marry him with impunity."

Now that Graslin was married, all the mothers who had courted him for
ten years past pursued him with sarcasms.

Veronique grew visibly thinner and really ugly; her eyes looked weary,
her features coarsened, her manner was shy and awkward; she acquired
that air of cold and melancholy rigidity for which the ultra-pious are
so often blamed. Her skin took on a grayish tone; she dragged herself
languidly about during this first year of married life, ordinarily so
brilliant for a young wife. She tried to divert her mind by reading,
profiting by the liberty of married women to read what they please.
She read the novels of Walter Scott, the poems of Lord Byron, the
works of Schiller and of Goethe, and much else of modern and also
ancient literature. She learned to ride a horse, and to dance and to
draw. She painted water-colors and made sepia sketches, turning
ardently to all those resources which women employ to bear the
weariness of their solitude. She gave herself that second education
which most women derive from a man, but which she derived from herself
only.

The natural superiority of a free, sincere spirit, brought up, as it
were in a desert and strengthened by religion, had given her a sort of