his words thrilled through her with healing influence. She began to
feel something of a prisoner's satisfaction, when, after he has had
time to feel his utter loneliness and the weight of his chains, he
hears a neighbor knocking on the wall, and welcomes the sound which
brings a sense of human friendship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant.
But this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into the
old bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner might
say, that a companion in misfortune could neither lighten her own
bondage nor her future.

In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the susceptibilities
of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped to make some
progress towards religion. He came back again two days later, and from
the Marquise's welcome it was plain that she had looked forward to the
visit.

"Well, Mme. la Marquise, have you given a little thought to the great
mass of human suffering? Have you raised your eyes above our earth and
seen the immensity of the universe?--the worlds beyond worlds which
crush our vanity into insignificance, and with our vanity reduce our
sorrows?"

"No, monsieur," she said; "I cannot rise to such heights, our social
laws lie too heavily upon me, and rend my heart with a too poignant
anguish. And laws perhaps are less cruel than the usages of the world.
Ah! the world!"

"Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and custom the
practice of society."