The public virtue of M. le Précepteur, and his devotion to the country, was his favourite subject. “_Quoi_, madame! it is too much to have an old Roman for a husband. Again you go out alone,” he would say. Madame knew that her irreproachable husband was playing billiards at the moment, thinking very little of public duty, and still less of the enormity of leaving her to go out alone, but she held up her head and smiled disdainfully. “In our class, monsieur,” she said, “we are trained from our cradles to recognise that each has their share of duty--society for the women, but for the men the country. It is difficult, I am aware, to make it comprehensible among the _bourgeois_,” she added, sweeping past with the sweetest smile. Old Goudron grinned, but he had his match. Helen watched their passages of arms daily. The _employé’s_ wife was a good mother and an excellent housewife, but neither for home nor children would she have relinquished the grandeur of her caste. She paid visits at the _château_; she patronised the Curé; and visited the good Sisters, who kept their little school at the other end of the village; and maintained her little social circle with the stateliness of a duchess. Once a-week she had her little reception, which was attended by M. le Curé, M. le Vicaire (for it was a large parish), and the notary. Once a-week she and her husband dined at the _château_. Regularly as the weeks came round were these social rules observed, for, as she justly remarked, “Without society one vegetates, one does not live.” It was much in the mind of this one representative of high life in Latour, to open her doors to the strangers. The father’s appearance was perfectly _comme il faut_; and though Helen was shy, she had still the air of a young person who had been instructed, and might have been _né_, like madame herself.