She blushed, as she answered timidly, “Dear uncle, I am a heretic, or what we term a protestant. I think such scenes encourage anything but peace or family love.”
“A heretic, a Protestant!” repeated D’Elsac. “How is that, Victorine?”
She blushed still more deeply, saying, in very low tones, “My aunt Pauline, you know, married a native of Geneva, and went with him to dwell in Geneva. My uncle Basil was a protestant, and my aunt became one also. They had no family, uncle Dorsain, and my mother being very ill after my birth, my aunt Pauline, who happened to be here, took me to her home, and till I was fifteen, I never even saw my parents. My aunt is dead now,” she added, the tears filling her eyes, “and my dear uncle Basil too, so I have come back to live with my parents, and I am allowed to continue in the faith in which I was reared, at least, till I am one and twenty, and then Monsieur Le Prieur threatens to banish me from Salency, and my family, unless I renounce the Protestant faith. I am now seventeen,” she added, “Caliste is two years older, Lisette is nearly a year younger, and little Mimi is not eleven. I am allowed free intercourse with my family; and though my bible is taken from me, yet I ought, and am very thankful, for the indulgence shown to me.”
“But why do you disapprove this fête, Victorine?” asked D’Elsac. “Does it not encourage virtue?”
“Dearest uncle,” she replied, “what is virtue? Are not we full of sin and corrupt before God, and will not such a strife as this encourage envy, hatred, and malice amongst us? Are we not driving peace from our breasts and our firesides, uncle Dorsain, and can we expect to be holier or better when she is banished from us? With peace goes love, and is not ‘love thy neighbour as thyself,’ the blessed Commandment given us by our Lord?”
D’Elsac, however, did not agree on this point, and he told her so, while, secretly, he congratulated himself on not having been too hasty in his choice. “I might have taken this heretic home,” he thought, “and so near Geneva as we are, she would have all the encouragement one heretic ever gives another. Let me be cautious, therefore, I will watch Caliste and Lisette carefully, before I select one as a daughter.”
Just when the good man had arrived at this conclusion, a sound of many voices reached them, and the next minute Margoton Durocher, with her daughters and neighbours, stopped at her door. There was an increase of noise and bustle on the appearance of D’Elsac, and for
some minutes everybody spoke and nobody listened.
Dorsain was much struck with the change years had effected in his sister. She was as lovely as any of her own daughters when they last met: now she was become very stout, and her features were very coarse; but still her dark eyes sparkled with pleasure, and her cheeks were glowing with unusual bloom.
She saluted her brother on each side the face, inquired kindly after his wife, and then without waiting for further particulars of the reason of his visit, she called aloud for Caliste and Lisette to present them to their uncle.