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We owe our readers a digression at this point,
while we return for a few moments to say a little
more of the fortunes of Madame de Frontignac,
whom we left waiting with impatience for
the termination of the conversation between Mary
and Burr.

“Enfin, chère Sybille,” said Madame de Frontignac,
when Mary came out of the room, with
her cheeks glowing and her eye flashing with a
still unsubdued light, “te voilà encore! What did
he say, mimi? — did he ask for me?”

“Yes,” said Mary, “he asked for you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him that you wished me to excuse
you.”

“How did he look then? — did he look surprised?”

“A good deal so, I thought,” said Mary.

“Allons, mimi, — tell me all you said, and all
he said.”

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“Oh,” said Mary, “I am the worst person in
the world; in fact, I cannot remember anything
that I have said; but I told him that he must
leave you, and never see you any more.”

“Oh, mimi, never!”

Madame de Frontignac sat down on the side of
the bed with such a look of utter despair as went
to Mary's heart.

“You know that it is best, Virginie; do you
not?”

“Oh, yes, I know it; mais pourtant, c'est dur
comme la mort. Ah, well, what shall Virginie do
now?”

“You have your husband,” said Mary.

“Je ne l'aime point,” said Madame de Frontignac.

“Yes, but he is a good and honorable man, and
you should love him.”

“Love is not in our power,” said Madame de
Frontignac.

“Not every kind of love,” said Mary, “but
some kinds. If you have a kind, indulgent friend
who protects you and cares for you, you can be
grateful to him, you can try to make him happy,
and in time you may come to love him very
much. He is a thousand times nobler man, if
what you say is true, than the one who has injured
you so.”

“Oh, Mary!” said Madame de Frontignac,

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“there are some cases where we find it too easy
to love our enemies.”

“More than that,” said Mary; “I believe, that,
if you go on patiently in the way of duty, and
pray daily to God, He will at last take out of
your heart this painful love, and give you a true
and healthy one. As you say, such feelings are
very sweet and noble; but they are not the only
ones we have to live by; — we can find happiness
in duty, in self-sacrifice, in calm, sincere, honest
friendship. That is what you can feel for your
husband.”

“Your words cool me,” said Madame de Frontignac;
“thou art a sweet snow-maiden, and my
heart is hot and tired. I like to feel thee in my
arms,” she said, putting her arms around Mary,
and resting her head upon her shoulder. “Talk
to me so every day, and read me good cool verses
out of that beautiful Book, and perhaps by-and-by
I shall grow still and quiet like you.”

Thus Mary soothed her friend; but every few
days this soothing had to be done over, as long
as Burr remained in Newport. When he was
finally gone, she grew more calm. The simple,
homely ways of the cottage, the healthful routine
of daily domestic toils, into which she delighted
to enter, brought refreshment to her spirit. That
fine tact and exquisite social sympathy, which distinguish
the French above other nations, caused

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her at once to enter into the spirit of the life in
which she moved; so that she no longer shocked
any one's religious feelings by acts forbidden by
the Puritan idea of Sunday, or failed in any of
the exterior proprieties of religious life. She also
read and studied with avidity the English Bible,
which came to her with the novelty of a wholly
new book in a new language; nor was she without
a certain artistic appreciation of the austere
precision and gravity of the religious life by which
she was surrounded.

“It is sublime, but a little glaciale, like the Alps,”
she sometimes said to Mary and Mrs. Marvyn,
when speaking of it; “but then,” she added, playfully,
“there are the flowers, — les roses des Alpes, —
and the air is very strengthening, and it is near to
heaven, — faut avouer.”

We have shown how she appeared to the eye
of New England life; it may not be uninteresting
to give a letter to one of her friends, which showed
how the same appeared to her. It was not a friend
with whom she felt on such terms, that her intimacy
with Burr would appear at all in the correspondence.

“You behold me, my charming Gabrielle, quite
pastoral, recruiting from the dissipations of my
Philadelphia life in a quiet cottage, with most
worthy, excellent people, whom I have learned to
love very much. They are good and true, as pious

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as the saints themselves, although they do not belong
to the Church, — a thing which I am sorry
for; but then let us hope, that, if the world is
wide, heaven is wider, and that all worthy people
will find room at last. This is Virginie's own
little, pet, private heresy; and when I tell it to the
Abbé, he only smiles, and so I think, somehow,
that it is not so very bad as it might be.

“We have had a very gay life in Philadelphia,
and now I am growing tired of the world, and
think I shall retire to my cheese, like Lafontaine's
rat.

“These people in the country here in America
have a character quite their own, very different
from the life of cities, where one sees, for the most
part, only a continuation of the forms of good
society which exist in the Old World.

“In the country, these people seem simple, grave,
severe, always industrious, and, at first, cold and
reserved in their manners towards each other, but
with great warmth of heart. They are all obedient
to the word of their minister, who lives among
them just like any other man, and marries and
has children.

“Everything in their worship is plain and austere;
their churches are perfectly desolate; they
have no chants, no pictures, no carvings, — only a
most disconsolate, bare-looking building, where they
meet together, and sing one or two hymns, and the

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minister makes one or two prayers, all out of his
own thoughts, and then gives them a long, long
discourse about things which I cannot understand
enough English to comprehend.

“There is a very beautiful, charming young girl
here, the daughter of my hostess, who is as lovely
and as saintly as St. Catharine, and has such a
genius for religion, that, if she had been in our
Church, she would certainly have been made a
saint.

“Her mother is a good, worthy matron; and
the good priest lives in the family. I think he is
a man of very sublime religion, as much above
this world as a great mountain; but he has the true
sense of liberty and fraternity; for he has dared to
oppose with all his might this detestable and cruel
trade in poor negroes, which makes us, who are so
proud of the example of America in asserting the
rights of men, so ashamed for her inconsistencies.

“Well, now, there is a little romance getting up
in the cottage; for the good priest has fixed his
eyes on the pretty saint, and discovered, what he
must be blind not to see, that she is very lovely,—
and so, as he can marry, he wants to make her
his wife; and her mamma, who adores him as if
he were God, is quite set upon it. The sweet
Marie, however, has had a lover of her own in
her little heart, a beautiful young man, who went
to sea, as heroes always do, to seek his fortune.

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And the cruel sea has drowned him; and the
poor little saint has wept and prayed, till she is
so thin and sweet and mournful that it makes
one's heart ache to see her smile. In our Church,
Gabrielle, she would have gone into a convent;
but she makes a vocation of her daily life, and
goes round the house so sweetly, doing all the
little work that is to be done, as sacredly as the
nuns pray at the altar. For you must know, here
in New England, the people, for the most part,
keep no servants, but perform all the household
work themselves, with no end of spinning and
sewing besides. It is the true Arcadia, where you
find cultivated and refined people busying themselves
with the simplest toils. For these people
are well-read and well-bred, and truly ladies in all
things. And so my little Marie and I, we feed
the hens and chickens together, and we search for
eggs in the hay in the barn. And they have taught
me to spin at their great wheel, and at a little one
too, which makes a noise like the humming of a
bee.

“But where am I? Oh, I was telling about the
romance. Well, so the good priest has proposed
for my Marie, and the dear little soul has accepted
him as the nun accepts the veil; for she only loves
him filially and religiously. And now they are
going on, in their way, with preparations for the
wedding. They had what they call `a quilting

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here the other night, to prepare the bride's quilt, —
and all the friends in the neighborhood came; — it
was very amusing to see.

“The morals of this people are so austere, that
young men and girls are allowed the greatest freedom.
They associated and talk freely together, and
the young men walk home alone with the girls
after evening parties. And most generally, the
young people, I am told, arrange their marriages
among themselves before the consent of the parents
is asked. This is very strange to us. I must not
weary you, however, with the details. I watch my
little romance daily, and will let you hear further
as it progresses.

“With a thousand kisses, I am, ever, your loving

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