Gilberte had received as thorough an education as any girl educated at a Parisian boarding-school, and it is undoubtedly true that the education of women has made notable progress in the majority of those establishments in the past twenty years. The learning, the good sense and the manners of the women who have charge of them have undergone a similar amelioration, and talented men have deemed it not beneath their dignity to give courses of lectures in history, literature and elementary science for the benefit of that intelligent and perspicacious moiety of the human race. Gilberte had acquired some notion of what are called "accomplishments"; but, while complying with her father's wishes in this respect, she had given more attention to the development of her intellectual faculties. She had seasonably reflected that the fine arts would be but a feeble resource in a life of poverty and retirement, that household cares would take too much of her time, and that, as she was destined to work with her hands, it was her duty to train her mind so that she might not suffer from absence of thought and from a disorderly imagination. A sub-mistress, a woman of much merit, of whom she had made a friend and the confidante of her precarious future, had advised this employment of her faculties, and the girl, impressed by the wisdom of her advice, had followed it implicitly. This very pleasure in learning and retaining useful information had, however, caused the child some unhappiness since she had been deprived of books in the ruins of Châteaubrun. Monsieur Antoine would have made any sacrifice to procure books for her, if he could have detected her desire for them; but Gilberte, seeing how restricted their means were, and desiring more than all else that her father's comfort should not be impaired, was very careful not to mention the subject. Janille had said to herself, once for all, that her girl "had learning enough," and, judging her by herself--for the old lady was coquettish still in the matter of dress, with all her parsimony,--she employed her little savings in buying for her from time to time, a calico dress or a bit of lace. Gilberte feigned to receive these little gifts with extreme pleasure, in order not to lessen the pleasure which her old nurse derived from bringing them to her. But she sighed to herself at the thought that with the modest price of that finery she might have given her a volume of history or poetry. She devoted her hours of leisure to reading again and again the few books she had brought from her school, and she almost knew them by heart.