Accustomed as Marc was to insults, he only felt anxious when he thought of the violent scenes to which Louise must be subjected at the ladies' house. Her mother, still in an ailing state, was content to treat her coldly, with silent sadness, leaving Madame Duparque to thunder in the name of her angry Deity, and quicken the infernal flames under Satan's cauldrons. Ought not a big girl, already in her fourteenth year, to feel ashamed of living like a savage, like one of those dogs, who know nothing of religion and are driven from the churches? Was she not frightened by the thought of the eternal chastisement which would fall on her, the boiling oil, the iron forks, the red hot hooks, the prospect of being lacerated, boiled, and roasted during thousands after thousands of centuries? When Louise, on returning home in the evening, told Marc of those threats, he shuddered to think that such attempts should be made to capture her conscience by fright, and tried to read her eyes in order to ascertain if she were shaken. She at times seemed moved, but then things which were really too abominable were told her. And in her quiet, sensible way she would remark: 'It is really droll, papa, that the good God should be so spiteful! Grandmamma said to-day that if I once missed going to Mass the devil would cut my feet into little pieces through all eternity.... It would be very unjust; besides, it seems to me hardly possible.' After such remarks her father felt a little easier in mind. Unwilling as he was to do any violence to his daughter's growing intelligence, he entered into no direct discussion of the strange lessons which she received at the ladies' house; he contented himself with some general teaching, based on reason, and appealing to the child's sense of truth, justice, and kindness. He was delighted by the precocious wakening of good sense which he noticed in her, a craving for logic and certainty which she must have inherited from him. It was with joy that he saw a woman with a clear, strong mind and a tender heart already emerging from the weak girl, who still retained in many respects the childishness of her years. And if he felt anxious, it was from a fear lest the promise of a beautiful harvest should be destroyed. He only recovered his calmness when the girl astonished him by reasoning things as if she were already a grown woman full of sense. 'Oh! I am very polite, you know, with grandmamma,' she said one day. 'I tell her that if I do not go to confession or make my first Communion, it is because I am waiting till I am twenty years old, as you asked me to do.... That seems to me very reasonable. And, by keeping to that, I am very strong; for when one has reason on one's side one is always very strong, is it not so?'