were unknown to her, for she had no intimate friend to enlighten or
advise her. Injustice, which angers little minds, brings loftier souls
to question themselves, and communicates a species of humility to
them. Veronique condemned herself, endeavoring to see her own faults.
She tried to be affable; they called her false. She grew more gentle
still; they said she was a hypocrite, and her pious devotion helped on
the calumny. She spent money, gave dinners and balls, and they taxed
her with pride.

Unsuccessful in all these attempts, unjustly judged, rebuffed by the
petty and tormenting pride which characterizes provincial society,
where each individual is armed with pretensions and their attendant
uneasiness, Madame Graslin fell back into utter solitude. She returned
with eagerness to the arms of the Church. Her great soul, clothed with
so weak a flesh, showed her the multiplied commandments of Catholicism
as so many stones placed for protection along the precipices of life,
so many props brought by charitable hands to sustain human weakness on
its weary way; and she followed, with greater rigor than ever, even
the smallest religious practices.

On this the liberals of the town classed Madame Graslin among the
_devotes_, the ultras. To the different animosities Veronique had
innocently acquired, the virulence of party feeling now added its
periodical exasperation. But as this ostracism took nothing really
from her, she quietly left society and lived in books which offered
her such infinite resources. She meditated on what she read, she
compared systems, she widened immeasurably the horizons of her
intellect and the extent of her education; in this way she opened the
gates of her soul to curiosity.