Heavens! could all those things be true? she asked, as she lay back in her easy-chair, numbed by her enforced quiescence, and gazing on Paris, shrouded and mysterious, beneath the golden sun.  The events of her life now arose before her, conjured up by the perusal of the novel.  She saw herself a young girl in the house of her father, Mouret, a hatter at Marseilles.  The Rue des Petites-Maries was black and dismal, and the house, with its vat of steaming water ready to the hand of the hatter, exhaled a rank odor of dampness, even in fine weather.  She also saw her mother, who was ever an invalid, and who kissed her with pale lips, without speaking.  No gleam of the sun penetrated into her little room.  Hard work went on around her; only by dint of toil did her father gain a workingman’s competency.  That summed up her early life, and till her marriage nothing intervened to break the monotony of days ever the same.  One morning, returning from market with her mother, a basketful of vegetables on her arm, she jostled against young Grandjean.  Charles turned round and followed them.  The love-romance of her life was in this incident.  For three months she was always meeting him, while he, bashful and awkward, could not pluck up courage to speak to her.  She was sixteen years of age, and a little proud of her lover, who, she knew, belonged to a wealthy family.  But she deemed him bad-looking, and often laughed at him, and no thought of him disturbed her sleep in the large, gloomy, damp house.  In the end they were married, and this marriage yet filled her with surprise.  Charles worshipped her, and would fling himself on the floor to kiss her bare feet.  She beamed on him, her smile full of kindness, as she rebuked him for such childishness.  Then another dull life began.  During twelve years no event of sufficient interest had occurred for her to bear in mind.  She was very quiet and very happy, tormented by no fever either of body or heart; her whole attention being given to the daily cares of a poor household.  Charles was still wont to kiss her fair white feet, while she showed herself indulgent and motherly towards him.  But other feeling she had none.  Then there abruptly came before her the room in the Hotel du Var, her husband in his coffin, and her widow’s robe hanging over a chair.  She had wept that day as on the winter’s night when her mother died.  Then once more the days glided on; for two months with her daughter she had again enjoyed peace and happiness.  Heaven! did that sum up everything?  What, then, did that book mean when it spoke of transcendent loves which illumine one’s existence?