towards healing the ulcers of society is to lay them bare?"
"Ugh! why write about them? We all know them too well! In life itself, there is, I tell you, quite enough of sorrow and of miasma. You, so young, may possibly not have as yet had any opportunity of coming into contact with them. … No, no: why should we ourselves spoil the short sweet moments when it is possible to dream?"
She then proposed that we should take a rest on a seat of bamboo-work, ensconced amongst exotic plants and shrubs in large green tubs. As soon as we had sat down, her trained pet lamb came and lay down on the skirt of her dress.
"Every one ought to have some sacred book—some Bible or other—ought he not?" she asked, after a short silence. "Alas! there is no one, with ever so little knowledge of philosophy, who can possibly believe in the existence of God—and all the rest of it.
"But we can at any rate respect the poetry which religion contains, and the feelings of those who have not as yet lost their faith: is it not so?"
