Page:Novels of Honoré de Balzac Volume 23.djvu/99

 wisdom is as good as the mother’s intuition; they recollect the niceties which with her are divination, and they show them in the exercise of a compassion whose strength doubtless develops in proportion to this great tenderness. The slowness of their movements supplies the place of the maternal gentleness. In short, with them as with children, life is reduced to simplicity; and if sentiment makes a slave of the mother, the detachment of all passion and the absence of all self-interest permits an old man to give himself up entirely. It is also no uncommon thing to see children on good terms with old people. The old soldier, the old curé and the old doctor, happy in Ursule’s caresses and coquetries, never tired of answering her or playing with her. Far from fretting them, this child’s petulance delighted them, and they gratified all her wishes whilst making everything a subject for instruction. And so this little girl grew surrounded by old people who smiled upon her and were like so many mothers around her, equally attentive and prudent. Thanks to this learned education, Ursule’s mind developed in the sphere most congenial to it. This rare plant lit upon its particular soil, inhaled the elements of its true life and assimilated the floods of light from its sun.

“In what religion will you bring up this little one?” asked the Abbé Chaperon of Minoret when Ursule was six years old.

“In yours,” replied the physician.

An atheist like Monsieur de Wolmar in La Nouvelle