"Oh! that of a trollop," replied the rector,--"a woman of questionable
morals, a writer for the stage; frequenting theatres and actors;
squandering her fortune among pamphleteers, painters, musicians, a
devilish society, in short. She writes books herself, and has taken a
false name by which she is better known, they tell me, than by her
own. She seems to be a sort of circus woman who never enters a church
except to look at the pictures. She has spent quite a fortune in
decorating Les Touches in a most improper fashion, making it a
Mohammedan paradise where the houris are not women. There is more wine
drunk there, they say, during the few weeks of her stay than the whole
year round in Guerande. The Demoiselles Bougniol let their lodgings
last year to men with beards, who were suspected of being Blues; they
sang wicked songs which made those virtuous women blush and weep, and
spent their time mostly at Les Touches. And this is the woman our dear
Calyste adores! If that creature wanted to-night one of the infamous
books in which the atheists of the present day scoff at holy things,
Calyste would saddle his horse himself and gallop to Nantes for it.
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