She had been brought up in one of those families who live shut up within themselves, entirely apart from the rest of the world. They pay no attention to political events, except to chat about them at table, and changes in government seem so far, so very far away that they are spoken of only as a matter of history--like the death of Louis XVI., or the advent of Napoleon. Customs change, fashions succeed each other, but changes are never perceptible in this family, where old traditions are always followed. And if some impossible story arises in the neighborhood, the scandal of it dies at the threshold of this house. The father and mother, alone in the evening, sometimes exchange a few words on such a subject, but in an undertone, as if the walls had ears. With great discretion, the father says: "Do you know about this terrible affair in the Rivoil family?" And the mother replies: "Who would have believed it? It is frightful!" The children doubt nothing, but come to the age of living, in their turn, with a bandage over their eyes and minds, without a suspicion of any other kind of existence, without knowing that one does not always think as he speaks, nor speak as he acts, without knowing that it is necessary to live at war with the world, or at least, in armed peace, without surmising that the ingenuous are frequently deceived, the sincere trifled with, and the good wronged. Some live until death in this blindness of probity, loyalty, and honor; so upright that nothing can open their eyes. Others, undeceived, without knowing much, are weighed down with despair, and die believing that they are the puppets of an exceptional fatality, the miserable victims of unlucky circumstance or particularly bad men. The Savignols arranged a marriage for their daughter when she was eighteen. She married a young man from Paris, George Barton, whose business was on the Exchange. He was an attractive youth, with a smooth tongue, and he observed all the outward proprieties necessary. But at the bottom of his heart he sneered a little at his guileless parents-in-law, calling them, among his friends, "My dear fossils." He belonged to a good family, and the young girl was rich. He took her to live in Paris. She became one of the provincials of Paris, of whom there are many. She remained ignorant of the great city, of its elegant people, of its pleasures and its customs, as she had always been ignorant of the perfidy and mystery of life. Shut up in her own household, she scarcely knew the street she lived in, and when she ventured into another quarter, it seemed to her that she had journeyed far, into an unknown, strange city. She would say in the evening: "I crossed the boulevards to-day." Two or three times a year, her husband took her to the theater. These were feast-days not to be forgotten, which she recalled continually. Sometimes at table, three months afterward, she would suddenly burst out laughing and exclaim: