attention to her needle than to the conversation she would hold with
some favorite saint or even with God Himself. For it is useless to
pretend that it is necessary to be Joan of Are to have such visitations:
every one of us has had them. Only, as a rule, our celestial visitors
leave the talking to us as we sit by the fireside: and they say never a
word. Rainette never dreamed of taking exception to it: silence gives
consent. Besides, she had so much to tell them that she hardly gave them
time to reply: she used to answer for them. She was a silent chatterer:
she had inherited her mother's volubility: but her fluency was drawn off
in inward speeches like a stream disappearing underground.--Of course
she was a party to the conspiracy against her uncle with the object of
procuring his conversion: she rejoiced over every inch of the house
wrested by the spirit of light from the spirit of darkness: and on more
than one occasion she had sewn a holy medallion on to the inside of the
lining of the old man's coat or had slipped into one of his pockets the
bead of a rosary, which her uncle, in order to please her, had pretended
not to notice.--This seizure by the two pious women of the bitter foe of
the priests was a source of indignation and joy to the cobbler. He had
an inexhaustible store of coarse pleasantries on the subject of women
who wear breeches: and he used to jeer at his friend for letting himself
be under their thumb. As a matter of fact he had no right to scoff: for
he had himself been afflicted for twenty years with a shrewish
cross-grained wife, who had always regarded him as an old scamp and had
taken him down a peg or two. But he was always careful not to mention
her. The stationer was a little ashamed, and used to defend himself
feebly, and in a mealy voice profess a Kropotkinesque gospel of
tolerance.

Rainette and Emmanuel were friends. They had seen each other every day
ever since they were children. To be quite accurate, Emmanuel only