I had
had all my letters sent to Mlle. Louise's address, so fetched them
shortly after my arrival and saw the girl again. Her family invited me
to dinner several times during the very first week, and I was associated
with French men and women immediately upon my arrival.
They were well-brought-up, good-natured, hospitable bourgeois, very
narrow in their views. Not in the sense that they took no interest in
politics and literature, but in that questions for them were decided
once and for all in the clerical spirit. They did not regard this as a
party standpoint, did not look upon themselves as adherents of a party;
their way of thinking was the right one; those who did not agree with
them held opinions they ought to be ashamed of, and which they probably,
in private, were ashamed of holding and expressing.
Mlle. Louise had a cousin whom she used to speak of as a warm-hearted
man with peculiar opinions, eager and impetuous, who would like to make
the acquaintance of her friend from the North. The aunts called him a
passionate Catholic, and an energetic writer in the service of the
Church Militant. Shortly after my arrival, I met him at dinner. He was a
middle-aged, pale, carelessly dressed man with ugly, irregular features,
and a very excitable manner. With him came his wife, who though pale and
enthusiastic like himself, yet looked quite terrestrial.
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