The Project Gutenberg eBook of Antonia, by George Sand.

THE LOVERS' TRYST

They sat there in the darkness, amid bushes laden with flowers, in the splendor of early summer, which retains all the charm of spring.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ANTONIA

To you who adopt orphan children, and who do good modestly, with both hands and at sight, as you read Mozart and Beethoven.

The time was the month of April, 1785, and the place Paris, where the spring that year was a genuine spring. The garden was in holiday attire, the greensward was studded with marguerites, the birds were singing, and the lilacs grew so straight and so close to Julien's window, that their fragrant clusters actually entered his room and strewed the white tiled floor of his studio with their little violet crosses.

Julien Thierry was a painter of flowers, like his father André Thierry, renowned under Louis XV. in the art of decorating spaces over doors, dining-room panels and boudoir ceilings. Those dainty ornaments became, under his skilful hands, objects of genuine, serious art, so that the artisan had became an artist, highly esteemed by people of taste, handsomely paid, and a person of much consideration in society. Julien, his pupil, had confined himself to painting on canvas. The fashion of his time frowned upon the fanciful and charming decorations of the Pompadour style. The Louis XVI. style was more severe; flowers were no longer strewn upon walls and ceilings, but were framed. Julien, then, painted flower and fruit pieces of the Mignon variety, mother-of-pearl shells, multi-colored butterflies, green lizards and drops of dew. He had much talent, he was handsome, he was twenty-four years old, and his father had left him nothing but debts.

André Thierry's widow was there in the studio where Julien was at work, and where the clusters of lilac shed their petals under the soft touch of a warm breeze. She was a woman of sixty, well-preserved, with eyes that were still beautiful, hair almost black, and slim, delicate hands. Short, slight, pale, dressed poorly, but with studied neatness, Madame Thierry was knitting mittens, and from time to time raised her eyes to glance at her son, who was absorbed in the study of a rose.

"Julien," she said, "why is it, I wonder, that you don't sing now when you are working? You might induce the nightingale to let us hear his voice."

"Listen, mother, there he is now," Julien replied. "He doesn't need anybody to give him the key."

And at that moment they did in fact hear the pure, sweet and resonant notes of the nightingale for the first time that year.

"Ah! so he has come!" exclaimed Madame Thierry. "To think that a whole year has passed!—Can you see him, Julien?" she asked, as the young man, putting aside his work, scrutinized the shrubs massed in front of the window.

And he returned to his easel. His mother watched him more closely, but she dared not question him.

"Never mind," she began after a few moments, "you have a beautiful voice too, and I used to love to hear you sing the pretty ballads your poor father sang so well—only last year at just this time!"

"Yes," Julien replied, "you insist on my singing them, and then you weep. No, I don't propose to sing any more!"

"I won't weep, I promise you! Sing me a lively one, and I will laugh—as if he were here!"

"No! don't ask me to sing. It makes me feel sad too! Later, later! it will come back gradually. Let us not force our sorrow!"

"Julien, we must not talk about sorrow any more," said the mother in a tone of gentle but indubitably strong determination. "I was a little weak at the beginning; you will forgive me, won't you? To lose thirty years of happiness in a day! But I ought to have reflected that you lost more than I did, because I still have you, while I am good for nothing except to love you."

"And what more can I want?" said Julien, kneeling in front of his mother. "You love me as no one else will ever love me, I know! and I do not say that you were weak. You concealed from me at least half of your suffering, I saw it and understood it. I gave you full credit for it, never fear, and I thank you for it, my dear mother! You sustained me when I needed it sadly; for I suffered on your account at least as much as on my own, and, when I saw how brave you were, I was always certain that God would perform a miracle to keep you alive and well for me, despite the most cruel of trials. He owed us that much, and He did it. Now, mother, you do not feel weak and disheartened any more, do you?"

"Now, my child, I am really happy. You are right in thinking that God sustains those who do not despair, and that He gives strength to those who pray to Him for it with all their hearts. Do not think that I am unhappy; I have wept bitterly; but how could I do otherwise? he was so lovely, so kind to us! and he always seemed to be so happy! He might have lived a long while—but that was not God's will. I have had such a beautiful life that I really had no right to ask for anything more. And see what the divine goodness has left me! the best and most dearly loved of sons! Should I complain? Should I pray for death? No, no! I will join your dear father when my time comes, and he will say to me: 'You did well to remain on earth as long as you could, and not leave our beloved son too soon.'"

"So you see," said Julien, putting his arms around his mother, "that we are no longer unhappy, and that there is no need for me to sing to divert our thoughts. We can think of him without bitterness and of each other without selfishness."

They remained in a close embrace for an instant, then returned to their respective occupations.

This took place in Rue de Babylone, in a sort of pavilion, already very old, for it dated from the reign of Louis XIII., and stood by itself at the end of the street, whose most modest structure—and at the same time the one nearest the said pavilion—was the house, to-day torn down, which was then called the hôtel d'Estrelle.

While Julien and his mother were engaged in the conversation we have just reported, two other persons were talking in a dainty little salon of the aforesaid hôtel d'Estrelle, a cool, homelike apartment, decorated in the style of the last years of Louis XVI., a pretty bastard Greek style, a little stiff in outline, but harmonious in tone and set off by much gilding against a pearl-white ground. The Comtesse d'Estrelle was simply dressed in a half-mourning gown of gray silk, and her friend the Baronne d'Ancourt in a morning visiting costume—that is to say, in an elaborate combination of muslins, ribbons and lace.

"Dear heart," she was saying to the countess, "I don't understand you at all. You are twenty years old; you are as beautiful as the Loves, and you persist in living in solitude like the wife of a petty bourgeois! You have put off your mourning, and everybody knows that you had no reason to regret your husband, the least regrettable of mankind. He left you a fortune; that is the only reasonable thing he ever did in his life."

"And as to that, my dear baroness, you are entirely mistaken. The fortune the count left me is overburdened with debts; I was told that, by making a few sacrifices and depriving myself of some luxuries, I might clear myself in a few years. So I accepted the succession without looking into it very carefully, and the result is that to-day, after two years of uncertainty and long explanations of which I did not understand a word, my new solicitor, who is a very honorable man, assures me that I have been deceived and that I am much nearer being poor than rich. The case is so serious, my dear, that I have been in consultation with him this morning to decide whether or not I could keep this house."

"What! sell your house! Why, that is impossible, my dear! It would be a stain on your husband's memory. His family will never consent to that."

"His family say that they will not consent, but they also say that they will not help me in any way. What do they want, and what do they expect me to do?"

"They are a detestable family!" cried the baroness, "but I ought not to be astonished at anything that the old marquis and his bigot of a wife may do!"

"Show him in," said the countess; and she added, addressing the baroness: "it is the very person of whom I was just speaking—my solicitor."

"That is not necessary. He has but a word to say to me, and as you know my plight——"

He was a man of about forty, balder than was natural at his age, but with a pleasant face, good-humored and frank, although remarkably shrewd and even satirical. One could see that much experience of the conduct of men at odds with their selfish interests had made him thoroughly practical, perhaps sceptical, but that it had not destroyed his ideal of uprightness and sincerity, which he was all the better able to recognize and appreciate.

"Well, Monsieur Thierry," said the countess, motioning to a chair, "is there anything new since this morning that you have taken the trouble to return?"

"Yes, madame," the solicitor replied, "there is something new. Monsieur le Marquis d'Estrelle sent his man of business to me with an offer which I have accepted in your behalf, subject to your assent, which I have come to obtain. He suggests coming to your assistance by turning over a few unimportant pieces of property, the total value of which, to be sure, will not pay all the debts which are hanging over you, but which will allay your anxieties for a moment and delay the sale of your house by enabling you to give your creditors something on account."

"Something on account! Is that all?" cried the Baroness d'Ancourt indignantly. "That is all that the Estrelle family can do for the widow of a spendthrift? Why, it is a perfect outrage, monsieur le procureur!"

"It is at the best a pitifully mean performance," rejoined Marcel Thierry; "I wasted my eloquence, and this is where we stand. As madame la comtesse has no fortune of her own, she is forced, in order to retain even a paltry dower, to submit to the conditions imposed by a family devoid of consideration and generosity."

"Say nothing at all," added the countess, who had listened with a resigned expression. "The family is what it is; it is not for me to pass judgment on them, bearing their name as I do. In every other respect I am a stranger to them, and lamentations would come with a very bad grace from me, for I alone am to blame."

"Yes," continued Madame d'Estrelle. "I have committed one great sin in my life. I consented to that marriage, against which my heart and my instincts rebelled. I was a coward! I was a mere child, and they gave me my choice between a convent and a disagreeable husband; I was afraid of everlasting seclusion, so I accepted the everlasting humiliation of an ill-assorted marriage. I did as so many other women have done, I thought that wealth would take the place of happiness. Happiness! I did not know, I have never known what it is. I was told that it consisted, above all things, in riding in a carriage, wearing diamonds, and having a box at the opera. My head was turned, I was intoxicated, put to sleep with presents. I must not say that my hand was forced, for that would not be true. To be sure there were locks and bolts and bars, imprisonment for life in the cloister, before me in case of refusal; but there was neither axe nor executioner, and I might have said no if I had had any courage. But we have none, my dear baroness, we may as well admit it; we women cannot make up our minds to resign frankly, and conceal our spring-time under the veil of a nun, which, however, would be more dignified, more honest and perhaps pleasanter in the end than to throw ourselves into the arms of the first stranger who presents himself. That then was my cowardice, my blindness, my folly, my vanity, my neglect of myself—in a word, my sin! I hope never to commit another; but I cannot forget that my punishment has come through my sin. I allowed puerile ambition to dispose of my life, and to-day I see that I was deceived, that I am not rich, that I must sell diamonds and horses, and that there is great danger that before long I shall not have over my head the roof of a house that bears my crest. That is as it should be—I feel it and admit it; I am penitent, but I do not want to be pitied, and I shall accept without discussion such alms as my husband's relations choose to bestow upon me in order to save his honor."

A pause of amazement and emotion succeeded this declaration from Julie d'Estrelle. She had spoken with ill-concealed distress, like one weary of discussing pecuniary interests, who gives way to the craving to pass her mental life in review and to discover the philosophical formula for her situation. The proud Amélie d'Ancourt was more scandalized than moved by an avowal which condemned her own ideas and the customs of her caste; moreover, she considered this effusive outburst on her friend's part, in the presence of a petty attorney, a little dangerous.

As for the attorney, he was sincerely touched; but he did not allow it to appear, being accustomed to see such explosions of secret feeling override the proprieties, even among people of the highest rank.

"My fair client is a sincere and touching creature," he said to himself; "she is right to accuse herself; there is no human law which can force a yes from the mouth which is determined to say no. She sinned like other women, because she longed for glittering gewgaws; but she sadly admits it, and in that she shows herself superior to most of her sisters. It is not for me to console her; I will confine myself to saving her, if I can.—Madame," he said aloud, after turning over these reflections in his mind, "you can augur better for your interests in the future than in the past. The present shows that monsieur le marquis will not easily make up his mind to set you free, but that he will not make up his mind to abandon you in any event. The paltry assistance which he offers you is not to be the last, so I was given to understand, and I am certain of it. Wait a few months, allow his son's creditors to threaten you, and you will find that he will put his hand in his pocket again to prevent the sale of this house. Forget these worries, do not think of moving, trust to time and circumstances."

"Very good, monsieur," said the baroness, who was in haste to give her opinion and display her pride of rank. "That is very excellent advice of yours; but, if I were in madame la countesse's place, I would not follow it. I would flatly refuse these miserable little charities! Yes, indeed, I should blush to accept them! I would go from this house with head erect, and live in a convent; or, better still, I would go to some one of my friends, Baronne d'Ancourt for example, and I would say to the marquis and marchioness: 'Arrange matters to suit yourselves; I will let the house be sold. I have incurred no debts, and I do not worry about those left by monsieur your son. Pay them with the tattered remnants of a fortune that he left me, and we will see whether you will put up with the public spectacle of my destitution.'—Yes, my dear Julie, that is what I would do, and I promise you that the marquis, who is very rich by his second marriage, would retract these infamous propositions he makes to-day."

"Does Madame la Comtesse d'Estrelle coincide with that opinion," said the solicitor, "and am I to burn our bridges?"

"No," replied the countess. "Tell me in two words of what my father-in-law's contribution consists, and, whatever it may be, I accept it."

"It consists," replied Marcel Thierry, "of a small farm in the Beauvoisis, worth about twenty thousand francs, and a very old, but not badly dilapidated pavilion, situated on your street at the end of the garden of your hôtel."

"Possibly," replied Marcel; "but the land has some value, and as the street is being built up, you might find a purchaser for it."

"And allow a house to be built so near my own," said Julie, "overlooking my garden, and almost overlooking my apartments."

"No, you would require that the house should turn its back to you and take the air from the street or from my uncle's garden."

"Who might your uncle be?" queried the baroness, with an indescribable touch of contempt in her tone.

"Monsieur Marcel Thierry," said the countess, "is a near relative of my wealthy neighbor, Monsieur Antoine Thierry, of whom you must certainly have heard."

"An armorer," rejoined Marcel. "He made his fortune in the colonies without ever setting foot on a ship, and, thanks to shrewd planning and good luck, he made several millions in his chimney corner, you might say."

"I congratulate him," replied the baroness. "And he lives in this neighborhood?"

"His house faces the new court; but his garden is separated only by a wall from the Comtesse d'Estrelle's, and the pavilion forms a sort of elbow between the two estates. Now my uncle might purchase the pavilion, either to straighten his own lines by destroying it, or to repair it and turn it into a green-house or gardener's lodge."

"So the wealthy Monsieur Thierry has his eye on the pavilion," observed the baroness, "and perhaps he has commissioned you——"

"He has commissioned me to do nothing," Marcel interrupted in a firm tone. "He has no knowledge whatever of the affairs of my other clients."

"Naturally, madame la baronne; but that will not prevent me from making him pay the highest possible price for whatever it may please madame la comtesse to sell him, and he will not take it ill of me. He is too good a man of business not to know the value of a piece of real estate that he really wants."

"But I have not decided to sell the property we are talking about," said the countess, emerging from a sort of vague reverie. "It does not annoy me at all. It is occupied, I am told, by a most excellent person of quiet habits."

"True, madame," said Marcel; "but the rent is so small that it will increase your income very slightly. However, if you prefer to keep it, it will be of use to you, in that it represents a substantial security for the interest on your debts."

"We will talk about this again, Monsieur Thierry. I will think it over and you will advise me further. Tell me the total amount of the gift to be made to me."

"Do so by all means," said the solicitor in an undertone. "A word of amiable and modest resignation costs a heart like yours nothing at all."

"Let us hope," he said, as he rose to go, "that the Marquis d'Estrelle will be touched by your gentleness."

"He is not a bad man," replied Julie, "but he is very old and feeble, and his second wife governs him completely."

"Do not speak ill of her, madame la baronne," retorted Marcel; "she belongs to that society and entertains those opinions which you certainly look upon as the law and the prophets."

"She abhors the new ideas and considers the privileges of birth the blessed ark of tradition."

"Do not insult me by comparing me to that woman," said the baroness; "that her ideas are all right is very possible; but her actions are all wrong. She is miserly, and people say that she would even desert her opinions for money."

"Oh! in that case," said Marcel, with an equivocal smile which Madame d'Ancourt took for an act of homage, "I can understand that madame la baronne must regard her with profound aversion."

"That man is not by any means ill-bred!" said the baroness, who had observed the dignified and respectful ease of his exit. "His name is Thierry, you say?"

"Like his uncle's the rich man, and like his other uncle, much more favorably known, Thierry the painter of flowers."

"Ah! the painter? I almost knew the excellent Thierry. My husband used to receive him in the morning."

"Everybody received him at all hours, my dear love, at least all people of taste and intelligence; for he was a charming old man, extremely well educated and most agreeable in conversation."

"Baron d'Ancourt apparently lacks taste and intelligence, for he did not choose to have him to dinner."

And, having delivered that double-edged retort, the baroness, who had a sovereign contempt for her husband's intellect, but forgave him in consideration of his eminent qualities in the matter of noble birth, indulged in a hearty and good-humored peal of laughter.

"Let us return to these Thierrys," she said. "Do I understand that you were well acquainted with the artist?"

"No, I did not know him. You know that Comte d'Estrelle fell sick immediately after our marriage, that I went with him to take the waters, and that as a matter of fact I have never received visitors at all, for he simply languished and languished until he died."

"That is why you have never seen society and know nothing about it. Poor dear, after sacrificing yourself for a brilliant life, you have known nothing except the duties due to a dying man, the crêpe of mourning, and the annoyances of business! Come, you must leave all this behind you, my dear Julie; you must marry again."

"I cannot say that is to my taste, for I have no idea. I have passed so entirely beside everything that goes to make up the life of young women—marriage, wealth and liberty—that I am hardly acquainted with myself. I know that I have consumed two years in ennui and melancholy, and thus far in my solitude, except for these money troubles, which are exceedingly distasteful to me, but which I do my best to endure without bitterness, I find myself in a more tolerable condition than in those through which I have previously passed. It may be that my character lacks energy just as my mind lacks variety. Being driven to some occupation to kill time, I have taken a liking to quiet amusements. I read a great deal, I draw a little, I play on the piano, I embroider, I write occasional letters to my old friends at the convent. I receive four or five people of a serious turn of mind, but good-tempered, and always the same, so that I am habitually placid and free from excitement. In a word, I do not suffer, and I am not bored; and that is a good deal to one who has always suffered or yawned with ennui hitherto. So leave me as I am, my friend. Come to see me as often as you can without interfering with your pleasures, and do not worry about my lot, which is not so bad as it might be."

"All this will do very well for a while, my dear, and you act like a woman of spirit by meeting misfortune with a stout heart; but all things have their day, and you must not sacrifice too much of the age of beauty and the advantages which it procures. You are not, be it said without offence, of very exalted birth, but your unfortunate marriage gave you a fine name and a title which placed you on a higher social level. You are a widow, which enables you to go about and be seen and known, and you have no children; so that you are still in all the bloom of your youth. You have no fortune; but, as your dower, overladen with debts as it is, will be no great loss, you can very well hold it cheap, and renounce it for a more eligible suitor than the first. If you choose to put yourself in my hands, I will undertake to arrange the sort of marriage for you to which you have a perfect right to aspire."

"If the man, instead of being a spendthrift and a fool, is really rich and well-born, for that is most important of all, and you cannot descend socially without blame; if he has breeding, tact, and the instincts of a man of quality; and, lastly, if he is an honorable man—what more can you ask? You must not expect that he will be in his first youth, and built like the hero of a novel.—We see but few of those magnificent creatures who are disposed to select a person of great merit for her lovely eyes; everybody is more or less hard up in these days!"

"I understand you," replied Madame d'Estrelle, with a sad smile. "You wish me to marry some excellent old man, some friend of yours, for I do not believe that you would propose a monster to me. Thanks, my dear baroness, I don't propose again to hire myself out to an invalid for large wages; for, to put things baldly, that is the sort of good-fortune which you have in mind for me. But, although I should be capable of waiting upon and nursing a father, if I had one, with the utmost tenderness, or even an old friend who needed me, I am firmly resolved never again to put my neck in the yoke of an infirm and morose stranger. I conscientiously fulfilled those depressing duties to Monsieur d'Estrelle, and everybody gave me credit for it. Now I am free, and I propose to remain free. I have no relatives left—only a few friends. I desire nothing more, and I ask you in all seriousness not to seek happiness for me according to your ideas, which I do not share. You, my friend, are still what I was at sixteen, when I was married. You have retained the illusions which were dinned into my ears; you believe that one cannot do without wealth and show, and, therefore, are younger than I. So much the better for you, since fate has bound you to a husband who denies you nothing. That is all that you need, is it not? But I should be more exacting; I should like to love. You laugh? Ah! yes, I know your theories. 'The honeymoon is short,' you have said to me a hundred times; 'but the golden moon is the light which never goes out.' For my part, I am foolish enough to say to myself that on the first day of my married life I propose to love and believe, even though it last but a day! Otherwise, I know by experience, marriage is a shame and a martyrdom."

"If that is so," said the baroness, rising, "I leave you to your reveries, my dear friend, and humbly beg pardon for interrupting them."

She took her leave somewhat piqued, for she was perspicacious, although foolish, and she realized that the gentle-mannered Julie, in that outbreak of rebellion, had told her a home-truth; but she was not evil-minded, and an hour later had forgotten her spleen. Indeed, she felt a little depressed, and at times was quite ready to say to herself:

Julie, on her part, felt that all her courage failed her as soon as she was left alone, and her pride melted away in tears. She was strong only as a result of nervous reactions, and perhaps of a more eager craving for love than she confessed to herself. Naturally she was timid, even shrinking. She knew the baroness's kind heart too well to fear a real rupture with her; but she too said to herself:

"Perhaps Amélie is right! I seek the impossible, the surroundings of rank and fortune in conjunction with love! Who ever obtains that? No one in my position. For lack of the best, I may be going to fall into the worst, which is solitude and sadness."

She took her parasol, one of those flat white parasols which produced a prettier effect among the shrubbery than our modern mushrooms, and placing the heels of her little slippers softly on the turf, her skirt turned gracefully back over the straight petticoat, she strolled pensively along under the lilac bushes in her garden, inhaling the air of spring in silent misery, starting at the voice of the nightingale, thinking of nobody, yet carried outside of herself by a boundless aspiration.

She went from lilac to lilac until she drew near the pavilion, where, an hour earlier, Julien Thierry, the painter's son, the rich man's nephew, the solicitor's cousin, was at work. The garden was large for a garden in Paris, and was beautiful, both as to its arrangement and its contents. Every day Madame d'Estrelle walked around it two or three times, casting a melancholy or loving glance at each of the flower-beds with which the turf was studded. When she came in sight of the windows of the Louis XIII. pavilion, she did not turn away nor worry about being seen, for the pavilion had been long unoccupied. Julien and his mother had been settled there only a month; Madame d'Estrelle had complained to Marcel Thierry because the marquis, her father-in-law, being unwilling to sacrifice the trifling revenue from so worthless a piece of property, had let it to strange tenants. Marcel had reassured her by informing her that the new tenant was the venerable and most respectable widow of his uncle the artist. He had not mentioned Julien. It may be that the countess did not know that the painter had left a son. At all events it had not occurred to her to make inquiries about him. She had never seen him at the windows, in the first place because she was very near-sighted and the young women in those days did not wear glasses; and secondly, because Julien, being informed of the proximity of a person of rigid morals, had taken great pains not to show himself. Sometimes Madame d'Estrelle had seen at the first floor window a pale, refined face surmounted by a white cap, which saluted her with deferential reserve. She had returned the sweet-faced widow's salutation pleasantly, even with respect; but they had not as yet exchanged a word.

On this day Julie, seeing that the ground-floor window was partly open, began to ask herself for the first time why she had not entered into neighborly relations with Madame Thierry. She examined the wall of the little building, and noticed that the door at the end of the garden was locked on the outside, as when the house was unoccupied. Madame Thierry could see nothing but the shrubbery, which concealed the countess's mansion and a part of the principal lawn. She had no right even to sit in the sunshine, along the wall of her house, under those flowering shrubs which actually entered her rooms, and which she had no right to prune. Moreover, she was forbidden, by the terms of her lease, to walk on the gravelled walk that ran inside the street wall. In a word, the door was condemned, and the tenant had made no vexatious demands on that subject.

It is true that the countess had anticipated such a demand with the determination to comply with it; but she had not noticed the feeling of timidity or pride which prevented Madame Thierry from making it. She thought of it on that day of self-condemnation, and reproached herself for not forestalling the poor widow's presumed desire.

"If it had been some ruined great lady," she thought, "I should have been careful not to forget the consideration due to age or misfortune. There is another proof of what I was just saying to the baroness: our minds are given a false direction and our hearts are withered by being brought up in the prejudices of rank. I feel that I have been selfish and discourteous in my treatment of this lady, who, as I have been told, is eminently respectable and in very straitened circumstances. How can I have forgotten a bounden duty? But here is an opportunity to make up for everything, and I will not throw it away; for I long to make peace with myself to-day."

The countess resolutely approached the window and coughed two or three times as if to give notice of her presence; and as no one stirred she ventured to tap on the glass.

Julien had gone out, but Madame Thierry was at home. Greatly surprised, she came to the window, and, when she saw that beautiful lady whom she knew perfectly well by sight, although she had never spoken to her, she threw it wide open.

"Excuse me, madame," said the countess, "for choosing this method of making your acquaintance; but I am not quite out of mourning yet, as you see; I do not pay visits, and I have something to say to you with your permission. Can you listen to me for a moment where you are?"

"Assuredly, madame, and with very great pleasure," replied Madame Thierry in a dignified and amiable tone, and with a perfect ease of manner in which there was nothing of the petty bourgeoise dazzled by an overture from one of more exalted station.

The countess was deeply impressed by the distinction of her face, by the excellent taste of her simple dress, by her sweet voice, and by an indefinable savor of refinement exhaled by her whole person.

"Be seated, I beg," she said, spying the arm-chair in the window recess; "I do not wish to keep you standing."

"But you, madame?" rejoined the widow with a smile. "Ah! I have an idea. With your permission I will pass you a chair."

Between them they succeeded in passing the chair over the window-sill, one holding it, the other receiving it, and smiling both at that unceremonious performance, which created a sort of intimacy between them at once.

"This is what I had to say," said Madame d'Estrelle when she was seated. "Hitherto, you have been living in a house belonging to the Marquis d'Estrelle, my father-in-law; but to-day you are living in my house, monsieur le marquis having presented it to me. I do not know as yet the terms of your lease; but there is one which I presume you will consent to modify."

"Be kind enough to tell me which one you refer to, madame la comtesse," replied the widow, bowing slightly, and with a faint cloud upon her face in anticipation of some disagreement.

"I refer," said the countess, "to keeping this miserable door always locked and bolted between us; it is a perfect eyesore to me. If you consent, I propose to have it opened to-morrow. I will give you the keys, and I invite you to walk in my garden for exercise or diversion as much as you please. It will be a great pleasure to me to meet you here. I live very much alone, and if you are willing to stop and rest sometimes in the house I live in, I will do my utmost to prevent your being dissatisfied with me as a neighbor."

Madame Thierry's face had lighted up. The countess's offer gave her genuine pleasure. To have a beautiful garden under one's eyes every hour in the day and not be able to set foot inside it, is a sort of torture. Moreover, she was deeply touched by the graceful way in which the invitation was given, and she realized at once that she had to do with a lovable and noble-hearted woman. She thanked her with charming warmth, abating nothing of the gentle dignity of her manners, and they at once began to converse as if they had always known each other, the instinctive sympathy between them was so quick and so entirely reciprocal.

"You live alone, you say?" said Madame Thierry; "surely it is a merely temporary condition of affairs, and not a matter of inclination?"

"It is partly because I shrink from society and distrust myself. Do you like society, madame?"

"I do not hate it," said the widow. "I left it because I was in love; I forgot it, then returned to it without an effort and without losing my head. Then I left it again, from necessity and without regret. All this seems a little obscure to you, does it not?"

"I know that Monsieur Thierry was in very comfortable circumstances and had most desirable social connections; that he went into society and received at his own house the very elite of persons of intellect."

"But you do not know of our earlier life? It made some noise at the time; but that was a long while ago and you are so young!"

"Stay!" said the countess. "I beg your pardon for my forgetfulness. Now, I remember: you are of noble birth?"

"Yes; I was Mademoiselle de Meuil, of a good old noble family of Lorraine. Indeed I might have been quite wealthy if I had consented to marry at the bidding of my guardians. I loved Monsieur Thierry, who was then only a journeyman painter, without a name and without means. I left everything, broke with everything, threw everything to the winds to become his wife. Little by little he became famous, and just as he began to earn money rapidly, I received my inheritance. So we were repaid for our constancy, not only by thirty years of happiness, but by more or less prosperity in our old age."

"Oh! now it's a different story! I am happy still, but in another way. I have lost my dearly loved companion, and with him all material comfort; but I still have such great consolation——"

She was about to mention her son, when a servant in livery came and informed the countess that her old friend Madame Desmorges was waiting for her in the house.

"To-morrow," said Julie as she rose to go, "we will talk at our ease, in your house or mine. I am anxious to know all about you, for I feel that I love you dearly. Forgive me for saying it so bluntly, but it is the truth! I must go to receive an elderly lady whom I cannot keep waiting; but I will give orders now for the workmen to come here to-morrow and open your prison door."

Madame Thierry was enchanted with Madame d'Estrelle. She was a woman of keen and spontaneous sympathies, still young in heart and full of enthusiasm, because she had lived in the enthusiastic atmosphere that surrounds a beloved artist, and she was more or less romantic, as a woman must be who has sacrificed everything to love. In the first flush of excitement, she would have told her son what had happened; but he was not there, and she exerted her ingenuity to arrange for him the same surprise she had enjoyed. Many times, as they were passing from comparative opulence to their present straitened and harassing condition, Julien had taken alarm at the privations with which his mother was threatened. They had had a pretty little cottage at Sèvres, with a fine garden, where Madame Thierry tended lovingly with her own hands the flowers which her husband and son used as models. They had had to sell everything. Julien's heart ached when he saw the poor old woman confined in Paris, in that pavilion, which they hired at a very modest rate. He hoped at first that they could enjoy the surrounding gardens; but the lease informed him that neither the Marquis d'Estrelle, their landlord, nor the wealthy Monsieur Thierry, their near neighbor and near kinsman, would allow them to walk elsewhere than in the street, which was always filled with workmen and with materials for buildings under construction.

"He complained bitterly of that condemned door," said Madame Thierry to herself, as she thought of her son. "A score of times he has had an idea of going and asking the countess to remove the prohibition for my benefit, promising on his honor that he himself would never cross the threshold of the pavilion. I have always dissuaded him from taking a step which might have subjected us to humiliation. How glad he will be to see me at liberty! But how shall I arrange matters to give him a little surprise? Suppose I should send him on an errand to-morrow morning, while the workmen are here?"

She was arranging her plan in her head, when Julien came home to dinner. The straw chair was still in the garden near the window. Madame d'Estrelle had placed her white parasol on the ground against the chair, and had forgotten to take it. Madame Thierry had gone into the kitchen to tell her only servant, a strapping Norman wench, to bring in the chair. So Julien saw those two objects, without any previous warning. He divined without comprehending; his head swam, his heart beat fast, and his mother found him so confused, so excited, so strange, that she was frightened, thinking that something had happened to him.

"Nothing, mother," said Julien, after a slight struggle with himself to overcome his emotion. "I hurried home and I was very warm, so that the cool air of the studio gave me a chill. I am hungry, let's have dinner; you can explain to me at the table the meaning of this visit you have received."

He took in the chair, unfolded and refolded the parasol, and kept it in his hands a long while, with an affectation of indifference; but his hands trembled, and he could not meet his mother's eyes.

"Mon Dieu!" she said to herself, "can it be that this increase of melancholy during the past fortnight, this refusal to sing, these stifled sighs, this peculiar behavior, this sleeplessness and loss of appetite are due to—But he doesn't know her, he has hardly seen her in the distance. Oh! my poor child, can it be possible?"

They took their places at the table. Julien questioned his mother calmly enough. She described the countess's visit with much discretion, restraining the impulse of her heart, which would have made her eloquent on the subject, had it not been for the discovery she had made, or the danger she began to foresee.

Julien felt that his mother was watching him, and he kept a close watch upon himself. He had never before had any secrets from her; but, during the last few days he had had one, and the fear of alarming her made him cunning.

"This step of Madame d'Estrelle," he said, "shows that she is a prudent and gracious woman. She has realized—a little tardily perhaps—that she owed you some consideration. Let us be grateful to her for her kindness of heart. You told her, I presume, that I had sufficient good sense not to consider myself included in the permission she has given you?"

"Indeed, she probably is not aware of my existence, and perhaps it will be as well for you never to mention your son to her, so that she may not repent of her gracious behavior."

"Why shouldn't I mention you to her? I shall or shall not, according to the turn the conversation happens to take."

"To meet her in the garden unquestionably; whether I go to her house or not will depend on the duration of her kindly disposition."

"I have, but at a distance. I have never happened to be near the window when she walked along our path."

"It was you who told me so. You must think I am very inquisitive, to watch all the beautiful women who pass? I am no longer a schoolboy, little mamma, I am a man, and my mind has been matured by disaster."

"Frankly, yes, for the moment! I am really overjoyed to think that you can walk in yonder garden at any time. I shall not be there to give you my arm, for naturally, I shall not be allowed to do that; but I shall see you go out and come back with more color and a little appetite, I hope!"

"Appetite! you are the one who has no appetite! You have eaten almost nothing to-day, and yet you said that you were hungry. Where are you going, pray?"

"To take Madame d'Estrelle's parasol to the porter at the hôtel. It would not be polite to neglect it."

"You are right, but Babet will take it. It is quite useless to show yourself to the people there. It might cause talk."

"Not that way!" cried Julien, taking it from her. "Babet will spot the silk with her hot hands."

He carefully wrapped the parasol in white paper, and handed it to Babet, not without regret, but without hesitation. He saw clearly enough the anxiety of his mother, who was watching him closely.

Babet remained away ten minutes; that was more time than she needed to walk the length of the garden on the street, enter the courtyard and return. She reappeared at last with the parasol and a note from the countess.

Madame Thierry glanced again at Julien, who controlled himself perfectly as he removed the paper in which he had wrapped the parasol. As soon as her back was turned, he covered it with kisses, like the romantic, excitable child he was, despite his claim to be a mature man. As for the poor mother, in her distrust and uncertainty she said to herself that every joy is attended by danger in this world, and that she might perhaps have reason to regret the amiable overtures of her too fascinating neighbor.

The next day the door swung on its hinges, and the keys were handed to Madame Thierry, who, urged on by Julien, ventured timidly to enter the countess's flowery domain. That lady had determined to do the honors of her primroses and hyacinths in person, but an inevitable disclosure by Marcel had changed the course of her ideas and cooled her zeal in some measure.

The solicitor had called again to discuss her affairs. She made haste to tell him that she had made his aunt's acquaintance, and spoke of her in the warmest possible terms. Then she went on to ask questions.

"The charming woman told me of her birth, her love and her past happiness, and she was on the point of telling me about what she calls her present happiness, when we were interrupted. I supposed, on the other hand, that she was very unhappy. Have I not heard that she had been forced to sell all that she had?"

"That is the truth," Marcel replied; "but there is something in my excellent aunt's character which not everybody can understand, but which you will understand perfectly, madame la comtesse. I can tell you her husband's story and hers in a word. My uncle the artist had a great heart, much talent and wit, but very little method and no foresight at all. As he had never had anything in his youth, and earned from day to day, first the bare necessaries of life, afterward the luxuries, he allowed himself to be carried along by his natural recklessness; and as he had some rather extravagant tastes—an artist's tastes, that tells the whole story—he soon established his outlay upon a very agreeable but very hazardous footing. He loved society and was popular; he never went on foot, he had a carriage; he gave exquisite little dinners in what he called his hut at Sèvres, which was crowded with sumptuous trinkets and artistic objects, for which he paid great prices; so that he ran in debt. His wife's property paid his debts, and enabled them to continue this risky but delightful life. When he died he was over head and ears in debt once more. My dear aunt knew it, but did not choose to cast a shadow on his heedless and light-hearted old age by showing the slightest concern for their son's future. 'My son is sensible,' she said; 'he is studying his art with passionate zeal. He will have as much talent as his father. He will be poor, and he will make his fortune. He will pass through the trials and triumphs which his father passed through honorably and courageously, and, knowing him as I do, I know that he will never reproach me for placing all my confidence in his noble heart.'—It turned out as she had foreseen. On his father's death, Julien Thierry, discovering that he had inherited nothing but debts, set bravely to work to pay them all, and, far from complaining of his mother, he told her that she had done well never to annoy the best of fathers. I confess that I do not agree with him there. The best of fathers is the one who sacrifices his tastes and his pleasures to the welfare of those who will probably survive him. My uncle the painter was a great man, I might better say a great child. Genius is a very fine thing; but devotion to those whom one loves is a vastly finer thing, and, let me say it under my breath, my uncle's widow and son seem to me to be much greater than he. What is madame la comtesse's opinion?"

"I think as you do, Monsieur Thierry," she replied, "and I admire your aunt and cousin with all my heart."

"Perhaps; it gives me something to think about. Do you know, I am deeply impressed by the example set us by some lives? I see that Madame Thierry is like me, being a widow and ruined; but I see that she is happy none the less, while I am not. She is proud to pay the debts of a husband whom she loved dearly,—and I—But I do not propose to retract the confession that escaped my lips yesterday in your presence. I wish to ask you one question. This son, this most excellent son of the worthy widow—where is he?"

"In Paris, madame, where he is working very hard and beginning to pay off the debts by painting pictures which are already almost as good as his father's. Some influential friends have become interested in him, and would push him ahead more rapidly if he were less scrupulous and proud; but with a little time he will be rich in his turn, indeed he now owes only a mere trifle, for which our Uncle Antoine has decided to become responsible, inasmuch as there is no longer any risk in so doing."

"This rich uncle seems to be about as timid and economical as my father-in-law the marquis?"

"No, madame; his is an entirely different sort of selfishness. It would take a long while to tell you about him, and it is time for me to be at the Palais."

"Of course, of course, some other time, Monsieur Thierry. Go and attend to your business. Here are the papers all signed; come again soon!"

"As soon as your affairs require it; rely upon my promptitude, madame la comtesse."

"Do not be so ceremonious. Come to see me when you have time, without regard to business. I am greatly indebted to you, Monsieur Thierry. You have not only given me the clear understanding of my position which was so necessary to me. You have given me good advice and have not led my honor astray in order to protect my selfish interests. In fact I see that you feel perhaps a little friendliness for me, and I thank you with all my heart."

The countess had a way of saying such simple things which made her extremely charming. Modest and dignified in her every act and every word, there was in her manners an indefinable suggestion of restrained emotion which denoted a too full heart, a heart seeking a fit receptacle for its overflow. The baroness would surely have considered that she was altogether too grateful and effusive to the pettifogger, who was only too happy to act for her. She would have told her that one must not spoil people of that sort by letting them see that they are necessary to one. Julie, being perfectly sure of herself, notwithstanding her pathetic humility, was not afraid of placing her friendship too low by bestowing it on a clever and honorable man; and, moreover, there was taking place within her, as we have seen, an insensible yet rapid reaction against the circle in which she had hitherto lived.

"A most delightful woman!" said Marcel Thierry to himself as he left her. "Deuce take me! if I were not an attorney, married to the best woman on earth, and the father of a bouncing boy—all of which things tend to guarantee the strength of a man's brain—I should be in love with this countess myself! oh! head over heels in love, I verily believe! I will tell my wife so this evening, and we will have a good laugh over it."

"How did it happen," Madame d'Estrelle was thinking at that moment, "that I did not ask Thierry what it is most important for me to know? I thought of it, and then I forgot it. I must find out, however! If this young Thierry lives with his mother, it will not be proper for him to make my garden his usual place of promenade. But perhaps he is not a young man. Did he say that he was young? His father was very old. But did he say that he was so very old? I cannot remember at all. However, my servants must know. Servants know everything."

"Camille," she said to her maid, "has this Madame Thierry, who lives in the old pavilion yonder,—a most excellent person, I know—has she any children? I talked with her yesterday, but I didn't think of asking her."

"He is a most excellent young man, madame la comtesse. Everybody speaks well of him. They are very poor, and they pay all their bills, never keep anybody waiting. And yet they are not stingy, they never do anything mean. One would say that they must be people of quality."

Camille did not mean to flatter her mistress by speaking in that way. She, too, claimed to be well-born and to have known better days. She claimed that some of her ancestors had been sheriffs.

"Mon Dieu, Camille, birth is of no consequence," said the countess, who was often vexed by her maid's airs.

"I beg pardon, madame la comtesse," rejoined Camille, tartly, "I thought that it was of the greatest consequence."

"As you please, my dear. Go and bring me my gray parasol. There is so much of this pride on all sides," thought Madame d'Estrelle, "that it will disgust me with all prejudices; it will make me more fond of Jean-Jacques Rousseau than I ought to be; and really I am beginning to wonder if the great are not living a little on their past, and if all this antiquated nonsense is not becoming useful to amuse our servants."

She took her gray parasol, with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction; then sat down in her salon, open to the April sun, saying to herself that she must not go in the direction of the pavilion any more, and perhaps not into her garden at all.

Then it was that Madame Thierry, finding that she did not come to meet her as she expected, ventured to go as far as the house, to pay her respects to her and thank her. Madame d'Estrelle received her with great courtesy, but the widow was too keen not to detect a shade of embarrassment in her greeting, and she had hardly seated herself before she thanked her and rose to go.

"Already?" said the countess. "You find me ungracious, I am sure, and I confess that I feel some slight embarrassment with you to-day which makes me act foolishly. So let us have done at once with this nonsense, which I am sure you will forgive. When I came and spoke to you yesterday, I had no idea that you had a son, a young and estimable man, I am told, who lives with you."

"Oh! mon Dieu! I am afraid that people will talk, that is all. I am young, alone in the world, with no immediate protector; a stranger in a family which accepted me only with regret, as I learned too late, and which blames me for not choosing to pass my period of mourning in a convent."

"I know all that, madame la comtesse; my nephew Marcel told me. As I am most solicitous for your good name, I do not propose that your kindness of heart shall carry you too far. You must not come to the pavilion so long as I live there, nor must I come into the garden or to your house. That is what I came to say to you. It is not necessary for me to add that my son never for an instant supposed that he was included in the permission which you so graciously gave me yesterday."

"Very good!" cried the countess, "this last point is all that is necessary. I thank you for your delicacy, which makes it possible for me not to return your visits; but as to the other point, I do not agree with you. You will walk in my garden and you will come to see me."

"No, no," replied Julie, earnestly, "you must come, I insist upon it! and, if you don't come, I shall be obliged to go to fetch you and knock at your window again, which will compromise me. Tell me," she added with a smile, "if you wish me to ruin myself for you? I warn you that I am capable of it."

Madame Thierry could not resist the fascination of this artless generosity. She yielded, making a mental vow that she would fly to the other end of Paris, if her presentiment of Julien's passion proved not to be a dream of her maternal imagination.

"Now," said the countess, "let us arrange the conditions of our intercourse, in order to put an end to all danger of evil-speaking. The pavilion has only four windows looking on my garden. The two lower ones—I do not know the arrangement of the rooms."

"The two lower ones are in the room which my son uses as a studio and I as a salon. We always sit there; but the lower sash, with four panes of ground glass, is stationary, and we open only the upper sashes; but they are often open at this season."

"Then you cannot look into my house, as I was told. But that sash with the ground glass was not stationary yesterday; it was partly open."

"For that reason I had to open that sash, a very unusual thing. But it was repaired and fastened again this morning. Light from below would be very inconvenient for my son in his painting, and he stretches a green cloth over the window on the inside. So he would have to stand on a chair to look into your garden, and, as he is a serious-minded man, and not an ill-taught schoolboy——"

"Very well, very well! My mind is at rest concerning the lower floor. The windows above——"

"And he never sits in your room? No one in my garden will ever see a man at your windows?"

"Nor will he ever come to the garden door, even for an instant? You will warn him."

"I do not doubt it. Commend my honor to him, and let us say no more about him; that is to say let us say no more about me, for to forbid you to speak of him would be very cruel. I know that he is your pride and your joy, and I congratulate you."

Madame Thierry had made up her mind not to say another word about Julien, but it was impossible for her to keep to her determination. Step by step she finally reached the point where she gave full expression to her idolatry of that adored son, who well deserved to be adored. The countess listened without any uncalled-for scruples to her enumeration of the young artist's talents and virtues. But she became a little melancholy at the thought that she should probably never have children to afford occupation for her youth and console her old age. Madame Thierry divined her secret thought and changed the subject.

JULIEN'S RUSE

He went to the window, the lower sash of which was really nailed in its place and covered with a green cloth; but there was an imperceptible slit in that cloth, there was a scratch on the ground glass, and through that treacherous crevice, cunningly made and cunningly concealed, he saw Madame d'Estrelle every day.

What was Julien doing while they were talking about him in the little summer salon of the hôtel d'Estrelle? He was working, or was supposed to be working. He constantly changed his position, he was hot and cold, he started at the slightest sound. He said to himself that perhaps his name was on the countess's lips at that moment, that perhaps she was asking some question about him, merely as a matter of form, without listening to the answer. He went to the window, the lower sash of which was really nailed in its place and covered with a green cloth; but there was an imperceptible slit in that cloth, there was a scratch on the ground glass, and through that treacherous crevice, cunningly made and cunningly concealed, he saw Madame d'Estrelle every day, strolling among the shrubbery in her garden, and walking along the path which was in full view from the pavilion. Julien knew almost to a minute her regular hours for that walk. When some accident interfered with her usual practice, then mysterious presentiments, the divinatory instinct which belongs only to love, and especially to a first love, warned him of Julie's approach. Then he invented a thousand pretexts, each more ingenious than the last, for turning his mother's vigilant eye in some other direction and gazing at his fair neighbor; or else he would find that he had to go and get something in his bedroom, and would go upstairs, his mother remaining below, enter her room and look through the blind. In fact he had adored Julie for a fortnight, and Julie thought that he had never seen her, and Madame Thierry lied unconsciously when she said that her son could see nothing from the studio, and that he had never looked out of her bedroom windows.

To Julien himself there was something insane, or at all events inexplicable, in that sudden passion which had taken possession of him, who was so sensible in all other respects; but as there is a cause for every effect, it is our place to seek it, and not be too free to admit the improbability of actual occurrences.

Marcel came very often, with or without his wife, to pass a portion of the evening with his aunt Thierry. Julien and he were much attached to each other, and although they often disagreed, Marcel considering Julien too romantic, and Julien considering Marcel too practical, they would have died for each other. Marcel talked freely about his practice, which was rapidly increasing. When Julien asked him: "Is your office flourishing?" he would answer: "It is budding, my boy, it is budding! I often have clients who bring me more honor than profit, and they are not the ones of whom I think the least."—Among those clients who were not fond of litigation, but to whom he owed pleasant or profitable connections, Marcel placed the Comtesse d'Estrelle in the first rank. He mentioned her so often and in such enthusiastic terms, he thought and spoke so severely of the lovely widow's unworthy husband, he inveighed so bitterly against the inhuman avarice of the family, he took such a profound interest in Julie's gentle and noble character, he involuntarily extolled her charms so warmly, that Julien was curious to see her; he saw her and loved her, if indeed he did not love her before he saw her.

Julien had never loved before. He had led a very virtuous life, he had experienced a great sorrow, he was at the height of his physical and mental development; his susceptibility was overstrained by the courageous efforts he had made, by a constant exchange of fervent affection with his loving mother, by a tendency to enthusiasm which he derived from long association with an enthusiastic father. He lived in seclusion, he denied himself all diversion and worked with intense eagerness to preserve the honor of his name and to save his mother from want. All this must inevitably find a vent, and that generous heart discharge its surplus emotion. We will say no more about it; indeed we have already said far too much in explanation of that impossible phenomenon which we see every day—a persistent, violent, boundless aspiration toward an object which is known to be unattainable. Long, long before, La Fontaine had written this refrain, which had passed into a proverb:

Now, while the countess was talking to Madame Thierry, and Julien to himself, Marcel Thierry was talking not far away with his uncle Antoine, the old bachelor, the ex-armorer, the rich man of the family.

Gentle reader—as they used to say at the time when these events took place—be kind enough to accompany us to Rue Blomet from the hôtel d'Estrelle on Rue de Babylone; skirting the garden wall for five minutes, passing in front of the Louis XIII. pavilion, then skirting the wall of another garden much larger than Madame d'Estrelle's, along a lane grass-grown on the edges, muddy and full of holes in the centre, destined at some time to be an extension of Rue de Babylone; then turning to the left and passing along another street in embryo to the corner of Rue Blomet, where stands a large house of the Louis XIV. style of architecture, formerly the hôtel de Melcy, recently purchased and occupied by Monsieur Antoine Thierry. If Monsieur Antoine Thierry would have allowed us to pass through his extensive grounds, we might have started from Julien's house and walked straight through the nursery to the rear of the mansion; but Uncle Antoine is determined to be master on his own estate, and he will not grant any easement whatsoever, even in favor of his brother's widow and son. Marcel, therefore, on leaving the countess, had taken this walk, half in the city, half in the country; and now behold him seated in the rich man's study, formerly a boudoir with painted and gilded ceiling, now filled with shelves and tables covered with bags of seeds, specimens of fruit moulded in wax, and baskets of tools and other articles connected with horticulture.

To reach this study, the proprietor's favorite retreat, he has had to pass through galleries and immense salons overweighted with gilt decorations in relief, grand in conception, but blackened by neglect and dampness; for the windows are shut and the shutters tightly closed in all weathers; the rich man never tarries in those majestic apartments, he never receives visitors there, he never gives parties or banquets, he cares for no one, he is suspicious of everybody. He loves rare flowers and exotic shrubs, he also esteems the product of fruit trees, and he is constantly deliberating upon the trimming and grafting of his subjects. He overlooks and directs in person a score of gardeners, whom he pays handsomely, and whose families he takes under his protection. Never attempt to interest him in any other people than those who flatter or subserve his caprices or his vanity.

This passion for gardening he acquired by a mere chance. One of the vessels which sailed to the far east on his account and for his profit brought from China a parcel of seeds which he carelessly dropped in an urn filled with earth. The seeds sprouted, the plants grew and were covered with lovely flowers. The armorer, who did not anticipate that result, and who, moreover, had never in his life looked at a plant, paid very little heed at first; but another accident brought to his house a connoisseur who went into ecstasies, and declared the priceless plant to be absolutely new and unknown to science.

This discovery exerted a decisive influence on Monsieur Antoine's life. He had always despised flowers: it was probable that he would never really understand them, for he was entirely devoid of the artistic sense; but his vanity, which was stifling him for lack of nourishment, pounced upon that windfall and pointed out to him the only way in which he could attain renown. He had a brother who painted flowers, who interpreted them, who loved them and gave his life to them. His brother was much admired; a trivial sketch from his brush made more noise than all of his older brother's great wealth. The older brother knew it, and was jealous of him. He could never hear the word art mentioned without shrugging his shoulders. He considered that the world was unjust and idiotic to be amused by trifles and not to admire the shrewdness of a man who, having started from nothing, counted his gold-pieces by the shovelful. He was disappointed, perturbed in mind.—But suddenly all was changed; he, too, was going to become a celebrity. The flowers which his brother summoned forth from the canvas he would summon from the earth, and they would not be mere every-day flowers which everybody knew and could name at sight; they would be rarities, plants from the four corners of the world, which scholars would have to cudgel their brains to define and classify and baptize. The most wonderful should bear his name! It had been suggested that his name should be given to several of his nurslings, but there was no hurry, since his collection was enriched every year by some marvel from the metropolis. He determined to wait, and was still waiting for a certain lily, which was likely to surpass all the rest, and which should bear, in addition to its generic name, the specific designation of Antonia Thierrii.

There was still time enough, for the uncle, although seventy-five years old, was still hale and hearty. He was a short man, rather slight, with a very good figure, but the hands hardened by constant contact with the soil, the skin tanned by constant exposure to the air, the neglected hair and dusty clothes, the back bent by bodily toil, presented the incongruous image of a villager with rustic manners, tenacious in his ideas, of an overbearing and surly disposition, ungrammatical, imperious and peremptory, planted in the heart of Paris, in a mansion of which he was the heedless and preoccupied master.

Marcel saluted his uncle with more familiarity than deference. He knew that flattery would be a waste of time; that the ex-armorer could be brought to terms on any subject only by a contest in obstinacy, in harsh language at need. He knew that his first impulse would be to say no; that no perhaps would be his last word; but that, in order to obtain one poor yes among a hundred noes he must fight without losing heart for a moment. Marcel was of a stout temper—it was a family trait—and he was so accustomed to fighting, especially against his uncle, that he derived a sort of painful pleasure from that occupation, which would have disgusted an artist in an instant.

"No, you might just as well sign it. My word's as good as gold; all the worse for the man who doubts it."

"Then you will see the creditor take possession of the house at Sèvres. He will be satisfied then, no doubt, but until then he will doubt my authority."

"What do you want me to say? If I should say no, you would not sign, and I want to induce you to sign."

"Because it bores me, tires me and annoys me to return to Sèvres and wait for them to make up their minds to come to see you, when the despatch of this paper by my clerk will remove all difficulties and save me expense and many steps. Do you understand?"

"You do whatever you please with me," replied the armorer, taking his pen. He dipped it in the ink three times before deciding, read and reread the document whereby he guaranteed the payment of the last six thousand francs of his brother's debts, looked Marcel in the eye to see if he was anxious or impatient, and, seeing that he was unmoved, regretfully renounced the pleasure of driving him into a passion. He signed the paper and tossed it in his face, with a wicked laugh, saying:

"Off with you, rascal! You never come to my house unless you want to get something out of me. You might have guaranteed the debts in my place, for you're rich enough!"

"If I were, be sure that it would be done already; but I am making the final payments for my practice, and I cannot deceive Julien any longer as to the sacrifices I am making for him. He is deeply concerned; his mother is in despair——"

"Oh! his mother, his mother!" sneered the rich man in a tone of profound aversion.

"You are not fond of her, as everyone knows; so she will never ask you for anything, never fear; but I am fond of my aunt, if you have no objection, and Julien adores her. Between them—between us three, if necessary—we will have everything paid within two years, and I flatter myself that you will not have to spend a sou."

"Well, I don't flatter myself that I shall not! No matter! I will do them this favor, which will be the last."

And, as the document was signed, folded and safely in his pocket, Marcel added, resting his elbows on the table and looking his uncle straight in the face:

"Do you know, my dear uncle of the good Lord, you must be a very mean fellow to allow your brother's country house to be sold."

"Ah! there we are again!" shouted Monsieur Antoine, rising and smiting the table a genuine peasant's blow with his fist. "You would like to see me use my money, earned by the sweat of my brow, to pay for the follies of a spendthrift! Since when have artists needed to have houses of their own and fill them with a heap of gimcracks that cost the eyes out of your head, and make gardens for themselves, with bridges and summer-houses, when they don't even know how to grow a bit of milkweed? What difference does it make to me whether my brother's folly is sold, and his widow doesn't now have any great chefs in her kitchen and great noblemen at her table? They made all the trouble for themselves when they chose to receive counts and marquises, and madame would say: 'My house, my servants, my horses!'—I knew well enough where all that nonsense would bring them up! And now to-day they find they need the old rat who lives in his corner like a wise man and a philosopher, despising society, scorning luxury and giving all his time to useful work! They lower their crests and put out their paws, and he—he wouldn't give anything from pity—those people don't deserve it—he gives from pride, and that's how he gets his revenge. Go and tell that to your aunt, the beautiful princess in distress: that's the errand your mean dog of an uncle gives you to do. Go, I say, you dog of a pettifogger! What are you standing there for, staring at me?"

Marcel was in fact studying his uncle's expression and attitude with his sharp gray eyes, as if he would search the lowest depths of his conscience.

"Bah!" he exclaimed abruptly, as he rose, "you are very harsh, very mean, I say it again; but you are not so cruel as that! You have some reason for hating your sister-in-law which nobody has ever been able to understand, which you don't understand very clearly yourself, I fancy, but which I shall succeed in unearthing, my dear uncle, never fear, for I propose to go to work upon it, and you know that when I have set my heart upon a thing, I am like you, I never let go."

As he spoke Marcel kept his eyes fixed on the rich man, and he detected a notable change in his manner. A sudden pallor drove the coarse flush from his face, which was already burned afresh by the sun of the new spring. His lips trembled, he pulled his hat down to his bushy black eyebrows, turned his back, and went out into his garden without a word.

It was not a garden with little pieces of rockery, little summer-houses, and little terra cotta cows lying in the grass, like those which were so common at that period, in imitation of the rustic style adopted at Trianon. Nor was there an undulating lawn with winding paths, clumps of trees at regular intervals, and truncated columns reflected in limpid ponds, like the garden of the hôtel d'Estrelle, one of the first picturesque attempts at the modern garden à l'anglaise. Nor were there the old-fashioned flower-beds and long regular borders of the time of Louis XIV.; everywhere the ground was turned up and cut by Monsieur Antoine's experiments. On all sides were beds in the shape of baskets, hearts, stars, triangles, ovals, shields and trefoils, surrounded by green borders and narrow paths forming a perfect labyrinth. There were flowers of all sorts, beautiful or curious, but deprived of all their national grace by cages made of rushes, nets of wire, umbrellas of reeds, supports and props of all sorts, to protect them from being marred by the dirt, burned by the sun or broken by the wind. His rosebushes, being constantly trimmed and watered, had an artificial look, they were so exceedingly tidy and shiny. His peonies were ball-shaped at the top, like a grenadier's pompon, and his tulips shone like metal in the sun. Around the flower-garden were immense, melancholy-looking nurseries, like rows of stakes with scraggy bunches of leaves at the top. All this rejoiced the horticulturist's eyes and banished his gloom.

A single corner of his garden, nearest the pavilion occupied by Madame Thierry, afforded a pleasant promenade. That corner he had devoted for twenty years to the acclimatation of exotic ornamental trees. They were beautiful now, and cast considerable shade; but Monsieur Antoine, as it was no longer necessary to take particular pains with them, had almost lost his interest in them, and much preferred a shoot of pine or acacia just raised under glass.

His hothouse was wonderfully beautiful. He hurried thither to bury the bitter memories which Marcel had recalled. He went in and out among his favorite plants, the lilies, and, after assuring himself of the good health of those which were in bloom, he halted beside a small porcelain vase wherein an unknown bulb was just beginning to put forth shoots of a dark and glossy green.

"What will this be?" he thought. "Will it mark an epoch in the history of gardening, like so many others that owe their fame to me? It seems a long while since anything has happened in my garden, and people don't talk about me so much as they ought to."

Meanwhile Marcel went away, deep in thought, for Monsieur Antoine Thierry's miserliness was of a very curious sort. The curious thing about it was that Monsieur Thierry was not miserly. He did not hoard his money, he did not lend money and never had done so, he denied himself nothing that caught his fancy, and he even did a good deed sometimes under the spur of self-love. How did it happen that he had let slip so excellent an opportunity of purchasing his late brother's property for his nephew? That generous performance would have given him much more celebrity than the future Antonia Thierrii. That is precisely the problem which Marcel was trying to solve. He knew that the old armorer had always been jealous, not of his artist brother's talent, which he despised, but of his renown and social success; but should not that jealousy have died with old André? Ought his widow and son to have that unfortunate inheritance forced upon them?

An idea passed through Marcel's mind; he retraced his steps and interrupted Monsieur Antoine's horticultural reveries.

"By the way, my gallant uncle," he said in a playful tone, "don't you want to buy the hôtel d'Estrelle pavilion?"

"I have told you a hundred times: to Comtesse d'Estrelle, who has just accepted it as a gift, it is worth ten thousand francs; to you, who want it and need it, it is worth twice that. It remains to be seen whether the countess won't ask three times ten thousand."

"Ah! that's like your great folk! sharper and stingier than the parvenus they despise!"

"Yes, she does! she's a fool like all the others. We are separated by a wall, and in the four years she's been living in the hôtel d'Estrelle, she's never had the curiosity to look into my garden."

"Say rather that she would consider herself dishonored if she put her foot inside a plebeian's door!"

"Bah! do you expect a young woman in mourning to compromise herself by strolling about in the garden of a bachelor of your age?"

"Yes, you have been in love, a fool if you please, at least once in your life! Try to insist that you haven't," added Marcel, as he saw that the horticulturist turned pale and seemed perturbed once more.

"Enough of this nonsense!" retorted the uncle, tapping the floor angrily with his foot. "You are Madame d'Estrelle's attorney; are you instructed to sell the pavilion?"

"There is no other in view at this moment. I am not given to lying, and I shall not deal falsely with you in the matters you have placed in my charge; but you are well aware that the street is being built up, and that by to-morrow, perhaps to-night, people will be fighting for the pavilion."

"Would she receive me?" said Monsieur Antoine, and his round eyes gleamed for an instant.

"Oh! yes, she would receive me in her courtyard, or at best in her ante-chamber, standing up, between two doors, as she receives a dog or an attorney!"

"You are a great stickler for manners, aren't you, for a man who won't take his hat off his head for anybody? But never fear: Madame d'Estrelle is as courteous to decent people of our class as to the greatest aristocrats. To prove it, she is on the best of terms with my aunt Thierry, and they are almost friends already."

"Ah!—Well, that is because madame your aunt is noble! The nobles understand each other like thieves at a fair!"

"Sapristi! uncle, once more I ask you what in heaven's name you have against your sister-in-law?"

"Because she is noble. Don't talk to me about your nobles! They are all heartless and ungrateful!"

This direct question was too much for Monsieur Antoine. He turned deathly pale, then flushed with anger, swore, tore his hair and shouted in a frenzy of rage:

"Nothing at all. I have never been able to extort a word from her about you; but I have had my suspicions, and now you have confessed. Tell me everything, uncle; that will be the best way, for it will relieve you, and you will have had a good heart-searching for once in your life."

Fully half an hour passed before the ex-armorer had exhausted all the spleen and bile of which his heart was full against Marcel, against Madame Thierry and against his deceased brother. When Marcel, who worried him cruelly, had succeeded in exhausting him, he carried his point, and old Antoine told him what follows, by fits and starts, forcing his nephew to extract from him bit by bit the secret of his life, which was also the secret of his character.

Forty years prior to the period of this narrative, Mademoiselle de Meuil, having eloped with André Thierry, had gone with her fiancé to seek shelter with Antoine Thierry, who was already rich and still quite young. Until that time the two brothers had lived on good terms with each other. While she remained in hiding at the hôtel de Melcy, Mademoiselle de Meuil had manifested sincere friendship for the armorer and perfect confidence in him. André, being prosecuted by the Meuil family and in danger of being consigned to the Bastille, had been compelled to leave Paris, to avert suspicion from the right quarter, while certain influential friends of his endeavored to adjust his affairs and gradually succeeded in so doing.

During this separation of several months, Mademoiselle de Meuil, constantly beset by the most painful anxiety, was more than once tempted to return to her parents in order to relieve the man she loved from the dangers and misfortunes which threatened him. More than once she discussed the subject frankly with André's brother, setting forth her fears and asking his advice. Then it was that Antoine conceived a strange idea, not treacherous and in no wise induced by passion, but in which his sensitive self-esteem was soon deeply involved. We will allow him to speak for a moment.

"The girl was ruined, although she had not lived with my brother as his wife. She was too far compromised to be taken back into the family, and the very best that she could hope for was to end her days in a convent. My brother seemed to me even more completely ruined than she was. A lettre de cachet had been issued against him, and that was no joke in those days. He might be shut up for twenty years, or for his whole life—who could say? And as the young lady told me all this herself, crying out every minute: 'What shall I do, Monsieur Antoine? Mon Dieu! what shall I do?' the idea came into my head of saving them both by marrying the girl. I was not in love with her, no! the devil take me if I lie! I should have loved any other woman as much, and I had never given a thought to marriage. If she had not been of noble birth, which gave her—not in my eyes, for I have no prejudices—in many people's eyes a sort of distinction, I shouldn't have paid much attention to her. Are you laughing? What are you laughing at, you ass of an attorney?"

"I am not laughing," said Marcel. "Go on. You were telling me about the bright idea that came into your head."

"So it did, and it wasn't any more foolish than my excellent brother's idea. Was he an eagle in those days, I would ask? No, he was a little dauber, who hadn't succeeded in laying by four sous, and no one thought anything of him. Was he any better looking than I was, or younger, or better bred? We were both brought up just alike; I was five years older, that's all. I wasn't the ugliest, and he wasn't a beauty by any means! He knew how to talk; he was always a chatterer. I said less, but what I said was solid. Neither one of us was more of a plebeian than the other, for we had the same father and mother. I had already saved nearly a million which no one knew anything about! With a million a man can do many things that my brother couldn't do: he can put the law to sleep and appease angry parents, and obtain patrons who never sleep; with a million one can even reach the king's ear, and surely one can marry a girl who has nothing at all. If society makes a fuss, it's because everyone would like to have the million in his own pocket. In fact, my million proved that even if I was not quite so fine a talker as my brother, it wasn't for want of wit and genius. That is what the girl ought to have understood. I didn't ask her to love me right away, but to love her André enough to forget him and keep him from going to prison and rotting there. Very good; instead of appreciating my good sense and generosity, lo and behold! the prude loses her temper, calls me a boor and a wicked brother and a dishonorable man, and decamps from my house without telling me where she's going, staking all to win all, and leaving a letter for me in which all the thanks she gives me is a promise never to betray my treachery to Monsieur André! I confess that I have never forgiven her for that, and that I never shall forgive her. As for my excellent brother, he behaved in a way that disgusted me almost as much as madame did. I didn't choose to wait till his prude of a wife had sold me. When I saw that he was out of his difficulties and married, I told him the whole story, just as I have told it to you. He didn't lose his temper; on the contrary, he thanked me for my good intentions, but then he began to laugh. You know what a frivolous, weak-brained creature he was! Well, my idea struck him as very comical, and he made fun of me. Thereupon I broke with him, and I would never see the wife or the husband again."

"At last!" said Marcel, "now I know where we are. But Julien? Why do you bear Julien a grudge, for he wasn't born at the time of your grievance?"

"I don't bear Julien a grudge; but he is his mother's son, and I am sure that he hates me."

"Upon my honor, Julien knows nothing of what you have told me, and he knows you only by your conduct of late. Do you think that he can possibly approve it? Shouldn't you have redeemed his mother's house, when he swore by all that is most sacred that he would devote his life to the payment of his debt to you?"

"A fine security, the life of a painter! Where did painting land his father, who was famous?"

"And suppose you had lost a matter of fifty thousand francs, you who certainly have more than——"

"Hush! you should never mention the amount of a man's fortune. When such figures are in the air, the walls and trees, even the flower-pots, have ears."

"You agree that the amount is so large that the Sèvres affair would have been a mere trifle, don't you?"

"I know that you are not one, but I shall believe that you are cruel, and that you like to see people suffer whom you believe to be your enemies."

"Be off, you are tiresome after a while! Look out that I don't set myself against you too?"

"Because you know that I am the only person on earth who is just a little attached to you and devoted to you, in spite of all your shortcomings."

"Ah! yes! you want me to redeem the house! Very good, when Julien is an orphan, I will look after him, on condition that he never mentions his mother to me."

"Perhaps you would like to have him kill her, would you? I tell you, uncle, you are mad, nothing more nor less. You are immeasurably vain, and you have the prejudices of the nobility in a more virulent form than any of the people who have ancestors. You were not in love with Mademoiselle de Meuil, I am sure; but her rank made you long to supplant your brother with her. You were frantically jealous of poor André, not because of that lovely and lovable young woman, but because of the parchments which she brought him with her dowry, and because of the sort of lustre that was reflected on him. In a word, you do not hate the nobles, you adore them, you envy them, you would give all your millions to have been born somebody, and your outbreaks of rage against them on every occasion are simply the spleen of a discarded lover, just as your hatred of my aunt is the spleen of a wounded and humiliated plebeian. That is your mania, my poor uncle; every man has his own, they say, but this one makes you cruel, and I am very sorry for you."

Perhaps the ex-armorer felt that Marcel was right; consequently he was about to get more angry than ever, but Marcel turned his back on him with a shrug, and went away, paying no heed to his invectives.

In reality Marcel was very glad to be in possession at last of the ideas and recollections which underlay his uncle's actions. He promised himself that he would take advantage of his knowledge to induce him to mend his ways. Did he succeed? The sequel will tell us.

"Madame," said Marcel to the Comtesse d'Estrelle the next morning, "you must sell the pavilion."

"Why?" said Julie. "It is so old and such a paltry affair, and of such trifling value too!"

"It has a value due to its location, which you must not overlook. My uncle will give you thirty thousand francs for it, perhaps more."

"This is the first time, my dear adviser, that you have advised me ill. I am very reluctant to extort money from a neighbor. What is it but speculating on the need he may have of that old building?"

"Wait a moment, my noble client! My uncle does not need the pavilion; he wants it, which is a very different matter. He is rich enough to pay for his whims. And what would you say if he were grateful to you for your extortion?"

"Enter into personal relations with him and he will offer you a bonus over and above the price."

"No, but simply bestow upon it a kindly, patronizing smile, and it will come to you of itself. Moreover, you will do a kind deed."

"You will show my uncle that you have much esteem and affection for my aunt and cousin, and thus you will induce the old Crœsus to assist them seriously in their distress."

"Then I will do it with all my heart, Monsieur Thierry; but, while I am already able to appreciate the worth of madame your aunt, what can I say of your cousin, whom I do not know?"

"No matter, speak of him with perfect confidence. My Julien has a heart of gold, the high spirit of a man of birth, and a mind above his condition; he is the best of sons, the truest of friends, the most honorable of men, and the most reasonable of artists. Say all that, madame la comtesse, and if Julien's life ever offers the slightest contradiction to your words, drive me from your presence, and never again give me your esteem or confidence."

Marcel spoke so vehemently that Julie was impressed. She abstained from asking questions, but she listened, without losing a word, to what followed this eulogy, when Marcel entered into details by which only the hardest of hearts could have failed to be moved. He told of Julien's care of his mother, of the privations which he endured without her knowledge, even going without proper food so that she might have enough. Therein Marcel, like Madame Thierry, unwittingly said what was not true. Julien had lost his appetite because he was in love, and Marcel, who had no suspicion of it, thought that he had divined the cause of that involuntary abstemiousness. But Julien was capable of doing much more for his mother than holding his appetite in check. He would have given the last drop of his blood for her; thus, while he did not tell the exact truth at that moment, Marcel said far less than the truth.

His panegyric of Julien was so generous and so affecting that the countess authorized Marcel to say to Uncle Antoine from her that she would like very much to see his rare flowers and inspect his extensive and interesting grounds. Uncle Antoine received this message with a haughty and sceptical air.

"I see," said he, "she wants to sell at a high price, and this condescension will cost me the eyes out of my head."

Marcel allowed him to talk, but was not deceived. The rich man's gratification was too evident.

On the appointed day Madame d'Estrelle resumed her deep mourning, entered her carriage and drove to the hôtel de Melcy. Marcel was at the door awaiting her. He offered her his hand, and as they went up the steps Uncle Antoine appeared in all his glory, in gardening costume. That was by no means ill-advised on the part of so stupid a man. He had duly considered, without mentioning it to Marcel, the plan of appearing in magnificent array; he was rich enough to have every seam stitched with gold; but the dread of ridicule deterred him, and, as he prided himself on being a great horticulturist before everything, he had the wit to appear in a strictly rustic costume.

Despite the asperity of his disposition and of his ordinary manners, despite his secret longing to assert his independence of mind and his philosophical pride before Marcel, he suddenly lost countenance before the fair Julie's gracious salutation and her sincere and limpid glance, and for the first time in thirty years removed his three-cornered hat and, instead of replacing it at once on his head, held it awkwardly, but respectfully, under his arm throughout the visit.

Julie did not resort to the vulgar ruse of trying to flatter his caprice; she was really interested in the treasures of horticulture which were exhibited to her. Herself a flower, she loved flowers. This is no madrigal,—to use a phrase then in vogue. There is a natural affinity between all divine creations, and in all ages symbols have been used to express realities.

The rich man, although he had little of the rose about him, bloomed resplendent at the sincere admiration bestowed on his beloved plants. Little by little his assumed haughtiness vanished before the sylph whose feet hardly grazed his lawns, and who flitted among his flower-beds like a caressing breeze. He awaited with entire resignation the announcement of the price fixed for the pavilion.

"Come, my dear uncle," said Marcel, seeing that Madame d'Estrelle had apparently forgotten the affair, "tell madame la comtesse of your desire to purchase—"

"True," said the rich man, careful not to commit himself too far, "I have had some idea of buying the pavilion; but now if madame does not wish to part with it——"

"I have but one reason for not wishing to part with it. It is occupied by some people whom I esteem, and whom I would not disturb on any consideration."

"Why, of course," said Marcel; "you would have to pay them a fair indemnity in case they should consent to cancel the lease, for you know they took it very recently."

"That is not what I was about to say," rejoined Julie, in a dignified tone which cut short all discussion. "I intended to say, and I say now that, if Madame Thierry, your sister-in-law, has the slightest objection to leaving that house, I propose to uphold her right to remain throughout the term of the lease; and that is a condition which the purchaser cannot evade on any pretext."

"That will delay the transaction and make it less advantageous to madame," said Monsieur Antoine, who, was consumed with longing to utter the fascinating title of countess, but could not quite make up his mind to do it.

"I do not say no to that, Monsieur Thierry," replied Julie, with an indifference which the rich man considered a fair artifice.

Marcel was about to reply. Julie, who evidently knew nothing about business, paid no heed to him, but answered ingenuously:

"Oh! I know nothing about that. You are well-known to be a shrewd and fair-minded man; you may fix the price yourself."

"You cannot believe, Monsieur Thierry, that the purpose of my visit to your garden was to haggle with you over the price of my small property. I know that it will probably be of advantage to you to own it, and you know that I am in straitened circumstances; that is no reason why we should be unreasonable in our demands upon each other; but in justice to myself I must tell you this, that I would not for a million francs consent to distress madame your sister-in-law, because I love and honor her especially. That being understood, you can think it over and let me know your decision; for you owe me a call now, my dear neighbor, and I shall not release you from the debt, whether we come to terms or not."

The countess withdrew, leaving the rich man dazzled by her charms; but, as he did not choose to allow Marcel to see his emotion, he pretended to exult for another reason.

"Well, attorney," he said triumphantly, "so you are fairly caught, and sheepish enough! What did you say about that lady's demands? She has more sense than you, and is willing to take my valuation——"

"Very good, very good, rejoice at her charming manners," replied Marcel, "and make the most of the praise which you owe to her politeness; but try to understand and to rise to the level of the rôle which she ascribes to you!"

"After all," rejoined Antoine, who was a very shrewd man of business, "when you say to a man like me: 'Pay what you choose,' it means: 'Pay like a great nobleman!' Very good, I will pay you a good price, mordi! and the great lady shall see whether I'm an old curmudgeon like her father-in-law the marquis! There is one thing that surprises me on the part of a woman who seems to be no fool: and that is the fuss she makes about my sister-in-law! I am not quite sure whether she meant to be agreeable to me or to make sport of me when she was talking about her."

"Of course, as she needs me; but then my sister-in-law must have made me out a miser?"

"My aunt has not mentioned you. Act in such a way that she will have no reason to complain."

"Let her complain if she chooses! what do I care? What do I want of this countess's esteem and friendship?"

"True," said Marcel, taking his hat, "it is all a matter of the utmost indifference to you! No matter, don't try to make yourself out a boor, and let us agree on a day so that I can announce your visit."

Antoine selected the second day thereafter, and they parted; but on the next day, without a word to Marcel, he took measures, indirectly but adroitly, to repurchase the house at Sèvres without loss to himself. Had he decided to make his nephew that present, to give his sister-in-law that pleasure? No indeed. There never was a more vindictive man, because nothing had occurred to wear out his passions, good or evil. There had been nothing in his narrow life of sufficient importance to soften the asperities of his nature. But a blow had been dealt at his secret vanity, and Julie d'Estrelle, without artifice, without scheming to that end, had subdued that savage spirit. He found in her an irresistible charm and an unaffected tone of equality, which, to be sure, he attributed to her need of money, but which flattered him as he had never been flattered in his life before. He had determined therefore to pretend to feel something like compassion for Madame Thierry. He was afraid that she would really do him an injury in Julie's estimation, and by purchasing the house at Sèvres in his own name, he persuaded himself that he would hold his foe in respect by the hope that that transaction would prove to be for Julien's benefit.

Meanwhile Marcel continued his efforts to relieve Madame d'Estrelle gradually from her burden, and on the evening of the day of her visit to Monsieur Antoine, he called upon her to scold her for her recklessness, and to insist that she should make the purchaser jump high for the sugar-plum. He found her disinclined to assent to any manœuvring to secure the desired result.

"Do as you think best, my dear Monsieur Thierry," she said; "but do not ask me to assist you. You told me that your uncle was a little vain, that I could easily gain some influence over him by virtue of my title, and that, by means of that influence, I could arouse his interest in his sister-in-law's lot. I made haste to test my power. You tell me that you hope for some good result; I did what my heart dictated, do not ask me to do anything more. Why are you in such a hurry to sell the pavilion? Didn't you tell me that my husband's creditors would be patient when they found that I was provided with an additional piece of real estate, that the marquis would never allow the hôtel d'Estrelle to be sold, and that I might venture to forget my troubles for some time? Keep your word and let your uncle hover about the pavilion, for that will give me an excuse for pleading Madame Thierry's cause. I told the truth when I said that I did not propose that she should be turned out of her present quarters against her will, and I tell you now that I should regret exceedingly to lose her as a neighbor."

Marcel, being unable to shake her determination, went to see his aunt Thierry and told her and Julien of the countess's generous action and of her kindly feeling for them. Madame Thierry was affected to tears, and, as Julien was careful to play his part well, so that certain suspicions might be dissipated, she ventured to express herself freely in praise of Julie d'Estrelle. Her heart was overflowing with gratitude which she had with difficulty restrained for two days past. Thus did the poor mother herself pour oil on the flame.

However, her suspicions came to life again more than once. She watched Julien furtively at every word that she uttered, and he seemed always perfectly tranquil; but suddenly there came a revelation. As she was saying to Marcel that she did not wish to stand in the way of Julie's selling the pavilion, and that she would pretend not to regret the necessity of moving, Julien warmly remonstrated.

"Move again?" he said. "We cannot do it. We spent a great deal, considering our income, in getting settled here."

"Our uncle will attend to that," said Marcel; "if he makes you move, I will undertake to make him pay——"

"My dear fellow," replied Julien, still very earnest, "you are full of zeal and kindness for us; but you know very well that my mother does not like your appeals to Uncle Antoine, that you have made them in a measure against her will, and that, if my interests were not involved, she would have peremptorily forbidden them. Whether she is right or wrong in considering Monsieur Thierry a detestable creature is not for us to judge. For my own part, however painful it may be to me, I will make all possible concessions to our kinsman's extraordinary character; but I do not propose that my mother's pride shall be wounded in her relations with him."

"No, no! I have no pride," cried Madame Thierry. "I have none now, Julien! You work too hard, you will surely be sick if we refuse to treat with Monsieur Antoine. Whatever Marcel does, I approve, and if I must humble myself, I shall be happy to do it! Let us do our duty, pay all our debts before everything. Let us say to the countess that it makes little difference to us whether we live here or somewhere else, so that she can sell at once; and let Marcel say to Monsieur Thierry that we demand our rights or that we appeal to his generosity—anything will satisfy me that will restore your health and peace of mind."

"My health is excellent," replied Julien warmly, "and nothing except moving again would disturb my peace of mind. I like my studio, I have a picture under way."

"But you are talking selfishly, my child! You forget that the countess is having trouble with her creditors as we are, even more than we are just now."

"And do you think that Monsieur Antoine will save her by buying this old barrack? Marcel knows better."

"What I think," said Marcel, "is that Uncle Antoine will submit to any conditions that the Comtesse d'Estrelle chooses to impose on him; he will pay a high price and he won't turn you out. Leave it to me and I may bring him to something even better."

"Bless my soul!" said Madame Thierry, abruptly changing the subject, "I forgot to bring my snuff-box; go and get it for me, Julien."

Julien went upstairs and his mother took advantage of the opportunity to say hastily to Marcel:

"Be careful, my dear child! a great disaster is hanging over us: Julien is in love with the countess!"

"Nonsense!" cried Marcel in utter stupefaction; "you are dreaming, my dear aunt, it isn't possible!"

"Speak lower. It is possible, it is a fact. Arrange for us to leave these dangerous quarters at once. Find some way without letting him suspect what I say. Save him and save me! Hush! he is coming down again!"

Julien had done the errand in a moment. He was in a hurry to resume the conversation; but he noticed a shade of constraint in his mother's glance, a suggestion of bewilderment and surprise in Marcel's manner. He suspected that he had betrayed himself, and he at once assumed a cheerful and indifferent air, which did not deceive Madame Thierry, but which reassured the solicitor. So Marcel took his leave, saying to himself that he would sound his cousin some day, but fully persuaded that his aunt was losing her wits a little, in the midst of all her excitement.

But Marcel made a much more astonishing discovery, a discovery so truly astonishing that we beg our readers to prepare themselves for it a long while beforehand.

Uncle Antoine paid his visit to Madame d'Estrelle. Madame d'Estrelle, without preparation or effort, was as charming, perhaps more charming than at their first interview. She received the horticulturist with neither more nor less affability than a person of her own station. Being gifted with a penetration which made up for his lack of experience, he realized that his reception was unexceptionable, and felt that he had never been so well treated by a person of such high rank. He recognized, moreover, that she was entirely indifferent to the question of money, and that her condescension concealed no ulterior motive, not even the motive of effecting a reconciliation between himself and Madame Thierry, as she avowed it frankly and with a most earnest and confident expression of her desire.

Marcel, seeing the gratification which his uncle derived from that interview, and which he almost forgot to conceal, realized that perfect sincerity was in some cases the shrewdest diplomacy, and that Madame d'Estrelle had accomplished more for her protégés and herself than if she had attempted to use craft.

"Now," said Monsieur Antoine, without waiting to be questioned, "we must settle this business of the pavilion. It is worth forty thousand francs to me, I know; I will give that amount, and as I propose to take possession at once, I owe it to Madame Thierry to submit to any claims she may make. I don't propose to have any discussion with that woman. So tell her that I will pay the six thousand francs for which I made myself responsible, and release her from any claim on that account; here is my receipt. And if she needs a few more francs to pay the expenses of moving, I won't refuse to let her have them. Go, and don't let me hear any more of her troubles; but, first of all, take the countess my offer, which I think is rather generous, and tell her of my promise to indemnify her protégés to their satisfaction."

Marcel, amazed but overjoyed, carried the good news first to Madame Thierry, who thanked heaven, and was very near blessing her brother-in-law for his determination to make her move instantly and at any price.

Madame d'Estrelle was not so well pleased; she had seen the attractive widow again, and had already become very fond of talking with her; moreover, she had some scruples; Monsieur Antoine's munificence seemed to her the foolish act of a parvenu and therefore humiliating to her.

"He will think," she said, "that I schemed to induce him to make this sacrifice, and that idea is abhorrent to me. No, I will accept only half of that sum. I much prefer to retain his esteem and my influence in behalf of the poor Thierrys. Go and tell him that I want but twenty thousand francs and a renewal of your aunt's lease."

"But my aunt is most anxious to move," Marcel replied. "Remember that a sum of considerable importance to her is involved."

"In that case give no more attention to her affairs in my name, but take special care of my dignity, which I place in your hands."

This reply, being duly transmitted to Monsieur Antoine, caused an explosion which astonished Marcel.

"So she declines my services," cried the rich man, "for I did intend to do her a service, knowing her embarrassment, and I went to her as a friend, since she had treated me like a friend! Ah! you see, Marcel, she is proud, she despises me, and she lied when she told me that she esteemed me! Very good, if that's how it is, I'll have my revenge. Yes, I'll have a cruel revenge, and she shall have only what she deserves, and, death of my life! I'll force her to go on her knees to me!"

Marcel silently scrutinized the angry rich man's still handsome and decidedly cruel face.

"What is this new mystery?" he said to himself, as he watched the black eyes, made larger by the fierce wrath which caused them to emit threatening flames. "Can wounded vanity cause such an outbreak? Can it be that my uncle is on the verge of madness? Is this solitary, monotonous, preoccupied life too much for his strength, and has his persistent turning of his back on everything that gives light and warmth to the lives of other men finally caused derangement in his brain?"

"I see what the game is! She wants my sacrifices to help Madame Thierry. Well, I tell you that I snap my fingers at Mademoiselle de Meuil! It's a long time since I ceased to have either hatred or affection for her. Let her go to the devil, and don't let me hear her name again! I will pay forty thousand francs for the pavilion, or I won't buy it. That's my way of thinking."

Matters remained in this position for several days; Madame d'Estrelle laughing at what she considered an attack of madness on the part of the old parvenu, and he, without Marcel's knowledge, acting in such a way as to put the finishing touch to that madness.

He purchased secretly all the debts which were hanging over the Comte d'Estrelle's widow, and, without saying a word, placed himself in a position where he could ruin her or save her, according to the attitude she might assume with respect to him. He purchased on his own account, but under a fictitious name, and with a deed of defeasance, the house at Sèvres with all its beautiful and costly contents. He did not let it, but placed a caretaker there to keep it in order. All this was done in a few days and without regard to cost; then, having artfully made inquiries of Marcel as to Madame d'Estrelle's intimate friends, he called upon the Baronne d'Ancourt, who received him with her grandest manner, but condescended to listen attentively when she learned that he had come to place her in a position to save Madame d'Estrelle from certain ruin.

Their interview was long and mysterious. The servants at the hôtel d'Ancourt, who were exceedingly puzzled by such a conference between their haughty mistress and a man dressed like a peasant, heard the baroness's shrill tones, then the rustic voice in labored and emphatic declamation—a dispute, in short, with intervals of raillery or merriment; for at times the baroness laughed until the windows shook.

"My dear," she said in great excitement, "I bring you five millions or poverty; choose."

"Not the faintest shadow of a name! a downright plebeian; but five millions, Julie!"

"Yes, I refuse. Wouldn't you do as much? Would you think well of me if I should accept?"

"I said just what you say: I sent my man about his business, I laughed at him. He replied obstinately; 'Five millions, madame, five millions!'"

"Convinced or not, I was surprised, dazzled. I said, like the queen: 'You persuade me strongly!'"

"Don't say yes, say perhaps; then you can reflect and I will reflect for you; for at this moment my brain is a little confused: those millions intoxicated me. What would you have? The man is old, and before long you will be free and people will have done crying out against the misalliance; besides, everybody knows that your own descent is not very distinguished. You will open a salon which will eclipse all Paris, and where all Paris will trample upon itself to take part in your entertainments; for, when all is said, all Paris has only one thing in its head, which is to be amused and to go where people are amused. You will give balls, concerts and theatricals; you will have artists, fine singers and fine talkers; in a word, bright people to stir up and amuse the people of quality, who are not bright. Ah! if I had millions—if I had just two—I should know what to do with them! Come, don't think I am mad, and don't be cowardly. Accept the plebeian and opulence."

Julie was indignant, Amélie was offended; they had a falling-out. Madame d'Ancourt had not mentioned the suitor's name—it had not occurred to Julie to inquire. She placed the matter in Marcel's hands, desiring that her refusal should be placed beyond question. She was afraid that her impulsive friend, in her anger, would compromise her by giving her protégé some reason to hope. Marcel went to Madame d'Ancourt to learn the name of the man with the five millions.

"Very well, I shall not tell you. I gave my word of honor not to mention any names, if the offer was rejected."

Marcel went to his uncle; he had a suspicion of the truth, but he had not dared suggest it to Madame d'Estrelle, thinking justly that she would reproach him for having brought her into relations with an insane old man. Moreover, he knew nothing of his uncle's fortune beyond the two millions which he admitted, and that figure, which had been often repeated to Julie, and so had prevented her from suspecting the truth, went far to destroy Marcel's suspicions.

"Well, my little uncle," he said abruptly as soon as he entered the room "so you have five millions, have you?"

Marcel worried him with questions to no purpose; the uncle was inscrutable. Moreover, a most momentous event had come to pass on his domain, and his thoughts were completely diverted from his dreams of marriage. The mysterious lily, at which he had so often gazed, which he had watched and nurtured and watered so carefully, in the hope of being able to give it his name, had unexpectedly, during those few days of forgetfulness and neglect, put forth a sturdy shoot, which was already laden with swelling buds; indeed, one of the buds had partly opened, displaying a corolla soft as satin, of an incomparable sheeny white, with bright red stripes. That exotic plant surpassed in oddity and in beauty all its congeners, and the frantic horticulturist, endowed with new life and almost consoled for his matrimonial mishap, exclaimed again and again, as he paced his hothouse floor in intense excitement, pausing at intervals to gloat over the budding of his plant:

"There it is! there it is! my reputation is made. That shall be the Antonia Thierrii, and all the collectors in Europe may burst with rage if they choose."

"Well, well!" said Marcel to himself, "is it the Antonia or the countess that my uncle is in love with?"

III

Marcel, seeing that his uncle's vanity as a horticulturist had resumed the upper hand, and thinking that he might exploit his delight to the advantage of his aunt and cousin, lavished the most fulsome praise on the future Antonia.

"You intend, of course, to present it to the Royal Garden. The learned professors will hold you in the greatest esteem!"

"Oh! as to that, not much!" replied Monsieur Antoine; "they can look at it to their heart's content, describe it in their fine language, specificize it as they say; but it's the only specimen of its kind, and I won't part with it until I have a lot of bulbs."

"That isn't enough! If I were in your place I would have it painted, in case of accident."

"How painted? do you mean to say that they paint flowers now? Ah! I understand, you mean that I ought to have a portrait made of it? I have thought of that for some of my other rare plants; but I was on bad terms with my brother, and when I went to other painters I was never satisfied with their crazy daubing. I paid big prices and then slashed the canvas or tore the paper."

"Yes you are! He has always called on you on the first of January every year, and you have never had any fault to find with his manner toward you."

"True, he is well brought up, he isn't stupid or bad-looking; but since I refused to advance him the money to redeem the house at Sèvres——"

"Julien has never uttered a word of blame or dissatisfaction, I give you my word of honor."

"Look! a small specimen tells the story as well as a large one. Take your magnifying glass and look at this."

Marcel took from his pocket a pretty little tortoise-shell snuff-box, on the lid of which was a bouquet painted in miniature by Julien. Although it was not in his regular line of work, he had made a microscopic reproduction of one of his large canvases to decorate this gift for Marcel, and it was in truth a little chef-d'œuvre.

Uncle Antoine did not know enough about painting to appreciate its artistic qualities; but he knew the structure of every detail of a plant as well as the most accomplished botanist, and, armed with his magnifying glass, if he could not count the stamens of each flower and the veins of each leaf, he could at all events assure himself that, in the sacrifices which the artist had made in favor of the general effect, there was involved no error, no caprice of the imagination, no offence, however slight, against the unchangeable laws of creation.

He looked a long while, then ingenuously inquired if Julien was capable of painting flowers as large as life, and upon Marcel's replying in the affirmative he decided that Julien should paint the portrait of the Antonia Thierrii, but that it must be done under his eyes, so that he could see to it that it was absolutely exact in the smallest details.

"I know what these painters are!" he said; "they always want to invent, to improve on the original. They talk to you about style and light and effect! Oh! I remember all their foolish words! If Julien chooses to obey me, between us we may perhaps succeed in producing something fine! Go and tell him, so that he will be ready to come and pass an hour here the day after to-morrow; it will be in full flower then."

Marcel went to consult Julien, then returned and told his uncle that he would require at least two days to study his model, and that he must let him work at it without making any suggestions until he should ask for them, when he would comply with them if they seemed judicious to him.

"He is very proud!" said the uncle angrily. "Here he is, raising objections already, like his father! Does he think that I ask him to do this as a favor? I intend to pay him, and to pay him as well as any other man would. What is a day of any gentleman's work worth?"

"He doesn't want to be paid. If you are satisfied with what he does, he will ask you for your custom."

"Nothing. You can settle everything yourself. We know that you are generous with people you don't hate, and you won't hate Julien when you know him better."

"No, he has some work that is urgent; he will give you a few hours to-morrow for a beginning."

On the following day Julien began to study the plant, and made several sketches of it, taking them from different points of view. Monsieur Antoine, faithful to the conditions exacted, did not see these sketches until they were submitted to him. He was more pleased with them than he chose to say. That conscientious method of studying the structure and bearing of the plant surprised and gratified him. Julien said little, but kept his eyes constantly on his model and seemed to love it passionately. The horticulturist began to feel some esteem for him, and as Madame Thierry had never mentioned to her son her brother-in-law's strange conduct toward her, as nothing in the young man's face or manners betrayed the slightest feeling of aversion, Antoine, who had the greater longing to become attached to some one as he became more selfish, conceived a latent, and if we may say so, an underground sort of friendship for him.

On the second day Julien began to paint; thereupon the uncle ceased to understand what he was doing and began to be uneasy. It was much worse when Julien informed him that he must finish the work in his studio, where the light was arranged as he wanted it, and where he had a multitude of little things which he could not carry back and forth without forgetting some of them. It was some distance from the pavilion to the hôtel de Melcy, and he would have no time to waste going to and fro the next day, for it was most essential to seize on the wing the plant's expression when it was in full bloom.

But to transport the model was to put it in peril, to hasten its blooming, weaken its stalk, deaden its lustre! Uncle Antoine, finding the artist immovable, determined to carry the priceless Antonia to the studio himself, with the greatest possible care, even at the risk of meeting Madame Thierry and being obliged to salute her.

In forcing this unpleasant sacrifice upon Uncle Antoine, Julien was not governed by the petty crotchets of a finical artist. He was following Marcel's advice, who was bent upon bringing about some sort of reconciliation between the relations, and who, having abandoned all hope of inducing Madame Thierry to make the slightest advance, had considered it necessary to surprise her by an unexpected meeting with her enemy.

Madame Thierry, whom we have represented to you as perfect in every respect, and who was as perfect as a woman can be, had nevertheless one little failing. Although she was not coquettish, although she did not pretend or believe herself to be still young, she had never said to herself: "I am an old woman."—What woman in her day was more sensible or more clear-sighted? Her youth had burst into flower among madrigals and gallant speech and manners. She had been so pretty, and she was so well preserved! Her husband, although he ruined her by his recklessness, had been in love with her to his last day, and it really seemed as if that old couple were destined to reproduce the legend of Philemon and Baucis. By dint of being told that she was still charming, which was perfectly true considering her age, good Madame Thierry still thought and felt herself to be all a woman, and after thirty-five years she had not forgotten how deeply the ex-armorer's proposal had wounded her pride and her self-esteem. That brutal man, who had had the audacity to say to her: "I am here, I am rich, you may as well love me instead of my brother," had caused her the only real mortification connected with what society in those days called "her fault." Later, her charm and loyalty had caused her husband's admirers to seek her society. She was able to hold her head erect, to triumph over prejudice, to occupy a place apart, an exceptional and most desirable place in public opinion. She was happy therefore except for a single wound, still bleeding, in the depths of her heart. It seemed to her that her honor had been sullied once in her life, by Monsieur Antoine's offers and aspirations.

Marcel was unable to penetrate this labyrinth of feminine refinements. He believed that time had wiped out the last trace of that absurd episode, and that Madame Thierry told the truth when she declared that she was ready to forgive everything in order to obtain for Julien his wealthy kinsman's favor.

Julien was not the man to covet Uncle Antoine's wealth. He had never said to himself that by fawning upon him he might make sure of a goodly share of his inheritance. For a long time he had fought against the idea of asking him for a slight service; but the longing to recover for his mother, by hard work, the house in which she had been so happy, had overcome his pride. Determined to devote his whole life, if necessary, to the task of paying his debt, he no longer blushed at the measures which Marcel took to induce Antoine to advance the necessary funds.

But, when it was time for his uncle to appear, Julien had some scruples about deceiving his mother. He was afraid that the surprise would be too great, and he tried to prepare her for the visit he expected. Madame Thierry made the best of it; but she had hardly saluted Monsieur Antoine when she went up to her room on the first pretext that occurred to her, and there remained, unable to make up her mind to face that antipathetic individual. Antoine, who had not seen her for thirty years or more, did not recognize her at once, and had not the presence of mind to apologize. He had walked across his grounds, which had a servants' gate opening on Rue de Babylone, near the pavilion. As he would trust no one but himself to touch his beplumed lily, he had brought it in with his own hands. He placed it with his own hands on the table in the little studio. He removed with his own hands the enormous horn of white paper which protected it; and when he saw that the artist was fairly at work, he took a newspaper which Madame d'Estrelle sent to Madame Thierry every morning, and dozed in a corner of the studio.

Julien expected Marcel, who had promised to attempt to effect the reconciliation which he had planned; but Marcel was detained by unexpected business and did not appear. Madame Thierry did not come down. Julien felt that he could not break the ice unassisted by his cousin; so he did not speak, but worked on, did his best, and thought of Julie.

Uncle Antoine slept with one eye open. He felt agitated, excited, constrained, in the house of the woman he hated, and in sight of the hôtel d'Estrelle, where his new inamorata lived. He rose, walked back and forth in his squeaking shoes, sat down again, and, forgetting his lily for a moment, tried to talk with Julien.

"That's not very much; but your father at your age didn't earn so much as that, and you will increase your prices from year to year, I suppose?"

Julien told this lie with resolution. It seemed to him that everybody was trying to pry into his secret, and he had determined to conceal it more securely with a cloak of savage distrust.

"That's funny," continued Uncle Antoine, who may have conceived some suspicions of his own in order to remain true to his habit of suspecting everybody. "Your mother passes hours and days in her garden, even in her salon, they say, and you——"

"I mean that I am not old enough to call on a person who receives only older people."

"I am very glad that I am young, I assure you!" replied Julien, laughing at his uncle's peculiar reflections.

The uncle, foiled in his attack, began to pace the floor again with a jerky, nerve-wearing step; then he said to Julien:

"Oho! that's not bad; that begins to look like something. But you're painting the whole background; where will you put the plant's name? I want it in big gold letters."

"You can have it put in large black letters on a raised plate at the top or bottom of the gilt frame."

"Good! that's a good idea! If you give me a masterpiece, I'll invite you to the ceremony of baptism."

"Oh! yes, the gentlemen from the Royal Garden are coming to breakfast with me to-morrow. I have invited them. I expect they'll come, and, as it tires me to sit in one place with folded arms, I'll just go home and see if everything is going on all right, for I mean to have a sort of party. Take good care of my lily, don't let anyone disturb you, work without stopping. I will come back in an hour."

And as each touch of the brush, wielded by Julien with an enthusiastic and unerring hand, seemed to make the marvellous plant actually live on the canvas, the uncle was profoundly impressed, smiled, and softened so far as to pat the young man's shoulder, saying:

He went out, but, instead of returning to his own house, he bent his steps mechanically in the direction of the hôtel d'Estrelle. A confused multitude of ideas, alluring, disturbing, audacious, caused a mad whirl in that poor brain, at once enfeebled and excited by isolation, wealth, ennui and vanity.

"I made a mistake," he said to himself, "in entrusting my proposal to that rattle-pated baroness. She went about it the wrong way; she didn't even mention my name! She said that I was an old roturier—that was all; and the little countess never guessed that she was referring to a well-preserved man, whom she herself praised for his excellent health and fine appearance; a man she knows to be generous and big-hearted, and whose talents as an amateur gardener and producer of varieties are not to be despised. I propose to straighten matters out. I am going to declare myself, and find out whether I am to love her or hate her."

He resolutely entered the house, and asked for an interview with the countess on business. She hesitated a little about receiving him; she knew that he was queer and she considered him a sort of maniac. She would have liked Marcel to be present at the interview; but she knew her old neighbor's sensitiveness, and she was afraid that she might impair Madame Thierry's interests by refusing to see him. So she bade her servant show him in. She was alone, but she thought that it would be the most absurd prudery to take alarm at a tête-à-tête with an old man whose rigid morals were well-known.

The rich man arrived prepared for a struggle; he imagined that he would have to fight to obtain this tête-à-tête. When he found that it was accorded him with no other obstacle than about two minutes of waiting, when he saw the slightly reserved but always courteous and affable greeting of his fair neighbor, his courage failed him. Like all those who have no opportunity to exchange their thoughts and no one to contradict them, he was as bold as any man could be in his projects; it was that boldness which had made him rich, and he had full confidence in it; but as he had never acted except behind the scenes, he was as incapable of taking a step in his own person on the stage of the world and of speaking to a lady, as he would have been of commanding a ship and negotiating with the Algonquin Indians. He turned pale, stammered, replaced his hat on his head, and fell into such dire confusion that Madame d'Estrelle, surprised and disturbed, was forced to come to his assistance by broaching the subject which, in her mind, was the motive of his visit.

"So we seem to be treading on delicate ground, my dear neighbor," she said to him in an amiable tone, "with respect to that wretched pavilion, which, I fondly hoped, was to establish a good understanding between us and put us on a neighborly footing. Do you know that I consider you unreasonable and that I am inclined to scold you?"

"I am mad, everyone knows that," rejoined Antoine sulkily. "If people keep on telling me so, they will end by making me believe it!"

"I ask nothing better than to be proved in the wrong," replied Julie; "but give me some good reason for accepting the gift you offer. I defy you to do it."

"You defy me? Then you wish me to speak? The reason is plain enough. I am interested in you."

"You are very kind!" said Julie, with an imperceptible smile of irony; "but——"

"But it's a fact, madame la comtesse, that you are made to make people think about you—and I was thinking about you, deuce take me! I said to myself: 'It's a pity that a person so—a lady who—in fact, a good woman should be hunted by bailiffs. I am only a vulgar fellow, but I have an idea that I'm not such a curmudgeon as the fine gentlemen and ladies of her family.'—That is why I said what I said; and you took offence at it, which shows that you look down on me."

"Oh! not that, no indeed!" cried the countess. "Look down on you because you wanted to do a kind deed? No, a hundred times, no! You know that that is impossible!"

"Listen, Monsieur Thierry; will you give me your word as a man of honor that you fully understand me, that you are quite sure of the sincerity and unselfishness of my behavior toward you?"

"Yes, madame, I give you my word of honor. If that wasn't so, mordié! do you suppose I would have come to see you again?"

"Very well, then I accept," said Julie, offering him her hand; "but on one condition, and that is that you give me back your good will."

Old Antoine lost his head when he felt that soft little hand in his hard dry one. He had a sort of dizzy feeling, and, in his uncertainty what to do with that hand, which he thought that he ought not to kiss, and which he dared not press, he let it fall again, and stammered out his thanks incoherently, but with something like warmth.

"Since you treat me as if you were my debtor," continued Madame d'Estrelle, "I warn you that I shall be very exacting. As a matter of fact, I need only twenty thousand francs for the moment. Authorize me to offer the other twenty thousand to Madame Thierry as from you."

"Oh! that isn't possible!" said Antoine angrily. "She will refuse.—There's a person who detests me! I have just been to call on her. She turned tail and ran up into her garret!"

"Never! If she chooses to think otherwise—But let her say what she will, I am an honorable man."

"In that case—look you! tell her to respect me as she ought, and don't talk about giving her money that belongs to you; for, deuce take me! if you choose to think well of me and not blush at my friendship, I'll toss her a pretty little present! I'll redeem her house at Sèvres. What would you say to that, eh?"

"I should say, my dear neighbor," exclaimed Madame d'Estrelle, deeply touched, "that you are the best of men!"

"The best, honor bright?" said the rich man, flattered to the last degree in his pride; "the best, you say?"

"Then it's as good as done! Will you come to breakfast at my house to-morrow with some scientific men, very famous men of intellect, and attend a christening? Will you be godmother and stand up with me?"

"I will come! but I must come with some one, as you are to have men there who do not know me. I will come with——"

"Forbid you? Do you know that you talk as if I were your master?" he rejoined, with a fatuous, mysterious air.

An old man of impure morals would have been wounded by that remark; but Antoine was virtuous in his madness, and we have no hesitation in asserting that he was not in love with Julie. The countess alone, not the woman, was the object of his passion. It mattered little to him whether she was his adopted daughter or his wife. Provided that he could show her to his grave and learned guests on the morrow, to Marcel, to Julien, to Madame Thierry above all, and to all his gardeners, leaning on his arm or seated at his table, and manifesting a sort of filial affection for him, undisturbed by any thought of what people might say, it seemed to him that he should be perfectly happy.

"And if I am not satisfied yet," he mused, speaking to himself of himself with boundless affection, "I shall be in time to tame her and lead her on to marriage, to sacrifice her title for the name of Thierry senior, which will then be quite as illustrious as that of my brother, Thierry the painter!—Since you are so polite," he said to Julie, "I will not be outdone. I will do all that you want me to do. For instance, be kind enough to invite Madame André Thierry in my name, and say to her that if you should fail to keep your appointment to-morrow through her fault, I will never forgive her as long as I live."

"Would it trouble you to say my friend?" said Antoine, whose tongue was loosened under the influence of internal well-being.

"It would not trouble me at all," replied Julie, laughingly; "I will call you that to-morrow, if you keep your word."

The old man took his leave, staggering like a drunken man. In the street he muttered to himself, with gleaming eyes and vehement gestures. The people he met took him for an escaped lunatic.

He followed the wall of the Estrelle garden, instinctively turning to see if Julien was still working and if his lily was uninjured. Suddenly it occurred to him that Madame d'Ancourt might ruin everything if she should reveal to Madame d'Estrelle the name of the suitor she had described. Julie evidently had no suspicion; evidently she saw no ulterior purpose behind her old neighbor's attachment. There was no reason why she should not come around gradually to the point of accepting him for a husband as she had more experience of his munificence; but he had undertaken to progress too rapidly; he had come within an ace of spoiling everything. As the baroness was not opposed to his success, he must hasten to her before thinking of anything else, tell her how matters had progressed and enjoin silence upon her. He jumped into an empty cab which happened to pass, and ordered the cabman to take him to the hôtel d'Ancourt.

Julie was profoundly moved; like every generous heart which has set on foot and carried through a good action, she was happy in absolute forgetfulness of self. That forgetfulness of self was so complete that she threw over her shoulders a light cape of violet silk and ran to the pavilion, impatient to announce the great news to Madame André, and to make her promise to chaperone her at the banquet at the hôtel de Melcy. She was thinking no more of Julien than if he had never existed, or, if she did think of him, she had no conception of the danger she ran in meeting him. That danger, of the gravity of which she was entirely ignorant, seemed to her a trifle in comparison with the great event which led her to go to his mother. Moreover, she was alone. No one in her salon, no one in the garden. Would the roses be scandalized by her action, would the nightingales cry out over the walls that Madame d'Estrelle was going into a house where there might be a young man whom she had never seen?

At that moment Julien had no leisure to watch for Julie's approach. He must paint rapidly and without distraction. The lily could not promise not to fade and curl at the edges before the last stroke of the brush. Madame Thierry was in her room with Marcel, who, after exchanging a few words with Julien, was attempting to confess and convince his aunt by lecturing her in private, as the subject of his homily had thus far been kept from the young artist, and it was thought best to keep him in ignorance of it.

Madame d'Estrelle tapped gently at the door of the pavilion. A huge dray laden with stone was passing along the street at that moment. The creaking of the wheels, the shouts of the drayman and the cracking of his whip drowned the faint sound of her knocking. Being most anxious to see Madame Thierry before she was informed of what had happened, and offended by some gruff message from the eccentric Antoine, Madame d'Estrelle resolutely opened the outer door, then a second one, and found herself in Julien's studio, face to face with him; for his model was placed in the light that shone through the window upon that door, and Julie appeared to the artist in a flood of radiance, as if she had come to him in a sunbeam.

He was so unprepared for that vision that he nearly fell senseless. All his blood rushed to his heart and his face turned whiter than Monsieur Antoine's lily. He could neither speak nor bow; he stood rooted to the floor, palette in hand, with staring eyes and as if actually turned to stone.

What analogous process was taking place in the lovely countess's heart and senses? It is certain that at the sight of that wonderfully beautiful young man, of a type of beauty wherein nobility of outline was surpassed only by intelligence of expression, she had a sort of instinctive feeling of respect; for he was not really a stranger to her. She knew the whole story of his upright, noble labor, his persistence in working earnestly and regularly, his filial love, his generous aspirations, the esteem and affection which he deserved, and which nobody who knew him could deny him. It may be that she had sometimes been curious to see him, but if so she had forbidden herself to give way to curiosity, whether because it seemed childish to her, or because she had a vague presentiment of some danger to herself.

Let us not attempt to dissect her feelings farther. She was apparently all ready for the invasion of the sentiment which was to decide her fate. She received a terrible shock; the confusion which paralyzed Julien took complete possession of her, and for a moment she was as silent and motionless as he.

If anyone had seen that beautiful couple, fashioned by the hands of God, in some region inaccessible to social prejudices, coming together under the natural and awe-inspiring conditions of the all-governing logic, he would have said unhesitatingly that logic, born of God, had made that magnificent man for that fascinating woman, and that sensible, genuine woman for that high-spirited and earnest man. All was charm and gentleness in Julie's grace; all was passion and unselfishness in Julien's beauty. As at last their glances met in the bright radiance of that May sun, redolent with the fragrance of nature's new light, each one uttered mentally, as it were an outcry of irresistible love, the names which chance had given them—Julie, Julien—as if they were destined to have but one name between them.

Thus it required a mighty effort of will for them to remember the distance that separated them socially.

"Of course, it is the young painter," thought Julie; "I fancied for a moment that I saw a demi-god."

"Alas!" said Julien to himself, "it is the grande dame; I fancied for a moment that I saw the half of myself."

She bowed first, and asked him if he were Monsieur Julien Thierry. He bowed to the ground as he said with a hypocritical expression of doubt:

What trifling! as if they had any occasion to ask questions before taking possession of each other.

"She is with my cousin Marcel Thierry," he added; "shall I tell him to come down and receive his orders?"

"Do not call anybody. I will go up if you will show me the way. But stay," she added, seeing that Julien was incapable of moving. "Perhaps it will be well to notify madame your mother. I did not see her yesterday; perhaps she is not well?"

"Then—yes, you must prepare her for a—pleasant surprise, thank God! which might, however, give her too great a shock. Tell her gently that I bring great and good news from Monsieur Antoine Thierry in relation to the house at Sèvres."

Julien could not nor did not think that he should resist the desire to thank Madame d'Estrelle. As he had recovered his presence of mind to some extent, he blessed her for what she was doing for his mother, in terms so overflowing with emotion and delicacy of sentiment, that she was profoundly touched, but not surprised. With such a nature as his and such an irresistible face Julien could not express himself otherwise. Thereupon the ice was broken and all the rigid rules of etiquette were forgotten, as if distrust would have been a mutual insult; and they talked for a moment with an extraordinary absence of constraint.

"I am overjoyed to have been of assistance to your mother," said Julie, "as you must know. She cannot have failed to tell you how dearly I love her!"

"You are quite right to love her, you will never repent it. Her heart is worthy of yours."

"I should be very glad if I could say that my heart is worthy of her confidence. Oh! she has told me about you! You adore her, I know; and God will bless you for that boundless filial love."

"And I do say so with all my heart. Why should I not say so to you? There are so few persons whom one can esteem without reserve!"

"There are some whose esteem is so great a blessing, that, in order to obtain it one would accept the hatred and contempt of all the rest of mankind."

"I know you, madame, by your acts of kindness, by the nobleness and delicacy of your heart. One must needs be deaf not to know you, blind not to understand you; and the calling down of one more blessing on your head cannot surprise you, provided that it be done humbly by one forever prostrate at your feet."

Julie felt that the atmosphere she breathed was beginning to glow. She instinctively tried to recover her self-possession, but could not find the necessary courage to run away from that perilous interview.

"Pleased for my poor mother's sake, oh! yes, madame; but on my own account—no!"

Julien's glowing, melting eyes said plainly enough what his thoughts were. Julie understood only too well. She tried to change the subject; she looked at the artist's pictures, she praised his talent, which was revealed to her simultaneously with his love, and she thought that she was telling him that she understood his art; but really it was his passion that she understood, and each word they uttered betrayed the all-absorbing thought that was in their minds. They both suddenly became so confused that they had no idea what they were talking about, and Madame d'Estrelle pounced upon Monsieur Antoine's lily in order to seem to be talking about something.

And with the heedless impetuosity of a lover drunk with joy, he broke the stalk of the Antonia Thierrii, and presented the superb flower to Julie.

Julie knew nothing whatever of the affair in which that plant played so important a part; she had not seen Marcel for three days, and as Madame Thierry carefully avoided any mention of Monsieur Antoine's name, nothing had been told her. When she was invited to a christening at the hôtel de Melcy on the following day, she naturally supposed that the subject was the child of some favorite gardener. In short she was a hundred leagues from imagining that by breaking that stalk Julien broke off all relations with his uncle, and cast, it might be, a whole lifetime of affluence at the feet of his idol.

And yet she uttered a cry of surprise and terror when she saw the artist's impulsive act.

And as he cast a last glance of mental possession on the lily, yielding for a moment to his love for his art, Julie replaced it on its stalk and held it there, saying with playful and utterly unconscious grace:

"I will hold it, finish your work; it will not wither at once. Come, make haste. The painting is so lovely! I should never forgive myself if I were the cause of your giving it up. Work away, I insist upon it!"

And as there was another fresh piece of canvas behind his picture, he drew and painted with furious ardor Madame d'Estrelle's shapely and beautiful hand. The lily did not progress. It stood on its stalk to no purpose, while the unconscious Julie held it there waiting until it should droop never to rise again.

O Uncle Antoine! where were you while such a crime was being committed, fearlessly and remorselessly, under the eye of a drowsing or evil-minded Providence?

A noise on the stairs recalled Julie to herself; it was Marcel coming down to tell Julien that his mother had agreed to see Monsieur Antoine when he returned to the pavilion. Madame d'Estrelle, ashamed to be surprised in that tête-à-tête and on such extraordinarily familiar terms with the artist, hurriedly pushed the stalk of the Antonia into the light, moist earth in the pot. The Antonia seemed to have noticed nothing and preserved its freshness and beauty, Marcel entered and did not discover the catastrophe.

The countess's presence was enough of a surprise for him. She felt exceedingly shamefaced before him, and Julien observed it. He at once, with true manliness, surmounted all emotion, and with imperturbable self-possession informed Marcel that madame la comtesse had just arrived and wished to speak with his mother. At the same time he brought a chair forward for Julie, as if she had not been seated at all, then left the room to tell Madame Thierry, saluting his visitor with respectful dignity.

Madame d'Estrelle was infinitely grateful to the artist for this sudden resolution. Even that slight indication showed her that he was no child capable of compromising her by ill-timed ingenuousness, but a man fully armed and ready to protect her against all the world, to save her at need from the consequences of her own rashness. She loved him altogether for it, but she felt at the same time that he was the master of her destiny, since there was already a secret between them to be concealed from the searching glances of their common friends.

While she tried to give Marcel a rapid résumé of her conversation with Monsieur Antoine, Julien entered his mother's room. She saw such a radiant expression on his face that she cried out:

"Mon Dieu! how beautiful your eyes are this morning! What on earth has happened?"

"Madame d'Estrelle is downstairs," said Julien. "She brings you joy and comfort. She has induced Monsieur Antoine to redeem your dear little cabin. Come quickly! put up your hair and come down to thank your good angel."

Madame Thierry, surprised, overjoyed, and at the same time dismayed—for the mother's eye could not be deceived, but saw clearly the restrained passion under Julien's apparent frankness,—was so overwhelmed that she burst into tears.

"Well, well," said Julien, "what does this mean? Poor mother! you are so stout-hearted in misfortune; can't you endure joy? Come, let your hair hang down, if you can't put it up and come down just as you are. Madame d'Estrelle will see you weeping for joy, and that will not make her feel hurt, I promise you!"

"You are afraid you will have to thank Monsieur Antoine? Nonsense, you unforgiving creature! that is too childish!"

Madame Thierry was on the point of swooning. Julien almost lost patience with her, for her agitation caused him to lose minutes, seconds which he might have passed with Julie. Marcel, who was delighted by the good news she had brought, was also vexed by his aunt's delay, and went upstairs to hurry her. So that Julie was left alone in the studio for several moments.

Those moments, swiftly as they passed, seemed afterward like a century in her memory, for the light shone into her heart in a single dazzling ray. "Your happiness is found," said an inward voice in a tone of sovereign authority: "it is here. It consists in nothing less than the possession of a boundless love concealed in the bosom of a narrow, straitened existence. Julien's mother knew and enjoyed that happiness throughout her youth. Intercourse with the world and opulence added nothing to her happiness. They rather diminished it by introducing ideas foreign to love. Forget society, you will be the better for it. Break with your whole past, which deceived you and set you at odds with yourself. Become reconciled to your own beginnings, which are more nearly connected with the third estate than with the nobility; and to your conscience, which reproaches you for having listened to the advice of false glory and for having yielded to the threats of your ambitious kinsfolk; seek to be received back into favor by the God who abandons souls which are enamored of false joys; be true, be strong like this young man who adores you, and who has just revealed to you in a glance the greatest and noblest passion you will ever inspire!"

As she listened to this mysterious voice in her own heart, Julie looked about her and was surprised to find that a divine tranquillity succeeded to the agitation which had overwhelmed her. She thoroughly relished the charm of a very simple little phenomenon. Short-sighted though she was, she was able to see everything in a room so much smaller than those to which she was accustomed. A very humble dwelling was that Louis XIII. pavilion; but it was embellished by a tastefulness of arrangement which revealed the artist whose love of refinement was not lessened by poverty. The building was not ugly in itself. The deep, broad window-recess where the widow had installed her arm-chair as in a little sanctum, with her spinning-wheel, her little table and the cushion for her feet, imparted a sort of homelike Flemish aspect to that part of the studio; the rest had been recently restored, but with the strictest economy. Plain gray wainscoting with raised borders to the panels; straight lines everywhere, but nothing out of proportion; a white ceiling, rather low, but devoid of any crushing effect; above the doors, oval spaces with very simple garlands of foliage carved on wood and painted, as was the beading of the panels, a deeper shade of gray than the rest; two or three beautiful fruit and flower pieces, highly prized specimens of André Thierry's work, with several sketches and one or two small studies by Julien; a large bowl of Rouen porcelain, standing on a console in front of a mirror, and filled with wild flowers and green branches gracefully arranged and hanging to the floor; a small rug before the couch, two or three easels, shells, boxes of insects, statuettes and engravings on a large table; cane-seated oak chairs, and a small harp, whose old gilded frame glistened in a dark corner, the only brilliant object in the whole room: surely there was nothing in all this to denote great affluence; but over it all there was a varnish of exquisite neatness, an atmosphere of freshness and a soft light most conducive to revery. The studio was darkened a little by the lilacs in the garden, which were too near and too dense; but there was a strange fascination in that greenish light, and there was in the air an indefinable invitation to rapt contemplation, which Julie felt most profoundly. What more did one need than that humble and unpretentious retreat to taste the pure joy and unending bliss of moral security? Of what benefit was it to Julie to have magnificent furniture, a thousand trinkets on her what-nots at which she never looked, blue ceilings starred with gold over her head, Gobelin carpets under her feet, Sèvres vases to hold her bouquets, lackeys in gold lace to announce her friends, her pockets full of Chinese fans, and her jewel-cases of diamonds? All those things had amused her but a single day, and what playthings can divert a heart that is bored? Julien's austere and laborious life, his pathetic, never-ending tête-à-tête with his mother, his love, concealed and prostrate as he himself had said,—these were surely purer and nobler than the existence, surrounded by flattery, of a frivolous or blasé nobleman.

A sparrow which Julien had tamed, and which lived among the neighboring trees, entered the studio and lighted familiarly on Julie's shoulder. She was surprised for a moment and thought that it was a miracle, a presage of happiness or of victory. She was really bewildered with emotion.

At last Madame Thierry appeared, sorely perturbed and deeply moved. She had insisted upon being left alone with the countess for an instant. She threw herself at her feet, and, being at once compelled by her to rise, spoke thus to her:

"You are as kind as the angels, my lovely neighbor. I bless you a thousand times! But I must tell you of my sorrow as well as my joy: my son, my dear Julien, is lost if he does not abandon all hope of ever seeing you again. He loves you, madame, he loves you madly! He deceived me, he told me that he had hardly seen you in the distance; but he sees you every day, he gazes at you stealthily, he is driving himself wild, he is killing himself, by looking at you. He doesn't eat, he doesn't sleep, he has lost all his cheerfulness, his eyes are hollow, his voice rings with fever. He has never loved before, but I know how he will love, how he loves already. Alas! he has an excitable temperament, with a mind of extraordinary constancy. Discourage him if possible, madame, by not looking at him, by not speaking to him, by never seeing him again. Have mercy on him and on me, and do not come to our house again! In a few days we shall go away; absence will cure him perhaps. If it does not cure him, I do not know what I shall do to avoid dying of grief."

Madame Thierry sobbed bitterly, and there was in her tears an eloquence born of conviction which dealt Julie the last blow. Her whole dream of happiness seemed destined to vanish in face of this mother's despair. That delicious revery which had poured such balm into her heart was a mere vagary at which she herself would smile when she returned home. Had she decided to break all social bonds in order to throw herself into the arms of a man whom she had just seen for the first time? That was a most absurd idea, and Madame Thierry was a thousand times right in looking upon it as impossible. Julie made an effort to agree with her and to drive away the vertigo that had assailed her; but the charm must have been exceedingly potent, for it seemed to her that reason had torn the heart out of her breast, and, instead of devising some dignified and sensible response to encourage the poor mother, she threw herself into her arms and followed her example by bursting into tears.

These tears so surprised Madame Thierry that she nearly lost her head. She dared not ask for an explanation of them; nor indeed had she any time to do so, for Julien and Marcel entered the room.

"Come, come, my dear mother," said the former, "you weep too much, and I am sure that you have forgotten to thank madame and make up your mind what to do. Marcel tells me that you ought also to thank Monsieur Thierry in person, and to go to his house to-morrow to——"

At that moment Julien, who was trying to see Julie's face, which was turned toward the window, detected the furtive movement she made to conceal and wipe away her tears. He forced back an exclamation, and involuntarily stepped toward her. Marcel, who saw the extraordinary confusion of the two women, but could not understand it at all, unless it meant that Madame Thierry had had an attack of hysterics and had said something too affecting to the countess, tried to take up Julien's interrupted sentence and continue the conversation.

But he followed Julien's example, and stood with staring eye and parted lips, unable to utter another word; for he had glanced, not at Julie, but at the plant which he was about to name, and saw that it was reduced to a parcel of leaves from which protruded a broken stalk, wet with the sap that dropped from it like tears.

"Where is it?" he cried in dismay. "Great God, Julien, what have you done with it? where is the Antonia?"

Nobody answered. Madame Thierry looked at Julien, who looked at nobody but Madame d'Estrelle, and Madame d'Estrelle, who knew nothing about the lily, did not know what to think of her solicitor's unaffected dismay.

And as she rose she dropped at her feet the Antonia, which, when she was left alone, she had taken from the vase again and laid lovingly on her knees.

Madame Thierry understood at once. Marcel simply noticed the fact; he had no suspicion of the real explanation.

"Ah! madame," he exclaimed, "to any other than you I should say that you have ruined us! But what can I say to you? And, after all, why need we fear, when you are the culprit? Uncle Antoine cannot possibly be angry with you, as you did not know. Did not Julien tell you?"

"Evidently Julien did not explain matters to our benefactress," said Madame Thierry; "but she must see that everybody here is not in his right mind, and that, by seeking to assist us, she runs the risk of adding to our woes."

"You are the one who is not in her right mind, mother," cried Julien, vehemently. "Really I don't understand you to-day! You are over-excited; your words betray your thoughts. It seems that, instead of thanking Madame d'Estrelle, you have been confiding to her some dreams or other."

Julien continued to scold his mother, who began to weep afresh. Marcel, observing Madame d'Estrelle's stupefaction, led her aside and gave her in three words the key to the mystery, and with it tangible proof, so to speak, of the young artist's ardent passion. She was profoundly affected at first, but she recovered her presence of mind and summoned all her strength to turn aside the blow which threatened the family.

A DISTURBED CONFERENCE Julien roughly enjoined silence on Marcel, grasping his arm and whispering: "For God's sake, hush! there is somebody outside listening!"

"Leave it to me," she said to Madame Thierry, striving to be cheerful; "I take everything on myself. It was I who committed the sin, it is for me to repair it."

"Yes, yes, I took a fancy to that flower and asked you for it! No, no! what am I saying? I am losing my mind! It was I who broke it, a foolish caprice—in a fit of absent-mindedness! You were not here. I am awkward, I can't see very well—However, I will explain it all to your uncle. Mon Dieu! what do you expect that he will do? He won't beat me. I will humbly beg his forgiveness; he is not so hard-hearted!"

"Alas!" said Madame Thierry, "unfortunately he is very hard-hearted when he is injured, and if he knew that Julien had committed this sacrilege——"

"So it was really Julien who did it?" said Marcel, utterly dumbfounded. "This is very strange!"

"Well, yes, it was I, I alone!" replied Julien, vehemently, "and there is nothing strange about it."

"Yes indeed there is!" said Marcel in an undertone, his eyes suddenly opened to the secret of the catastrophe. "You are a little too mad, my boy, and your heart must be as fickle as your brain to sacrifice your mother's future and your own in this way; to say nothing of the fact that Madame d'Estrelle is too kind, and that she would have done much better to teach you your place."

"Hush, Marcel, hush!" said Julien, "you are talking nonsense; you don't understand."

"I understand too well," replied Marcel, "and, on my word, I agree with your mother now, I say that you are losing your wits!"

This dialogue in undertones was carried on in the window-recess, while the two women stood together near the vase in which Madame Thierry was trying to replant the stalk of the beheaded lily, talking at random, and saying nothing which had the slightest meaning; for her greatest source of perturbation was not the Antonia, but the storm of passion which had caused its destruction. Suddenly Julien, who was in the habit of handling the curtain and examining the slit through which he looked into the garden, roughly enjoined silence on Marcel, grasping his arm and whispering:

There was someone there in truth, and it was too late to keep silent. Uncle Antoine had overheard all. How he came to be there, prowling about and spying, in Madame d'Estrelle's garden, we shall soon learn. Marcel felt Julien's gesture, discovered the slit in the curtain, and, looking out in his turn, saw the ogre listening. He left the window and warned Madame d'Estrelle. They talked together for a moment in pantomime. They had not been able to decide what course they should pursue, when Antoine, hearing nothing more, knocked at the garden door.

It was a good deal like the arrival of the statue at Pierre's festival. Julien was about to open the door, when Madame d'Estrelle, with a rapid forecast of the absurd scene to which her presence would give rise and of the deplorable outbreak which might follow if she were not present, instantly made up her mind as to her own course, detained Julien authoritatively by placing her hand on the young artist's quivering arm, and, motioning to him and to the others not to stir, she went into the vestibule, opened the door herself, and found herself face to face with Monsieur Antoine. Although he had prepared his part, he was a little surprised himself, whereas he expected to surprise everybody.

"You, neighbor?" said Julie, feigning astonishment. "What are you doing here? Did you come back to my house? Who told you where I was? and what induced you to pass through my garden?"

And, without waiting for his reply, she passed her arm through the horticulturist's and led him some distance from the pavilion to the shore of the little pond in the centre of the lawn in front of the mansion.

"Ah! at last you call me what I want you to call me! Very good, then you are willing to talk with me alone, I see—The same with me; I want to talk to you about an idea of mine——"

"Let us sit down on this bench, neighbor, and I will listen to you; but first you must listen to me, for I have a confession to make to you."

"Pshaw! pshaw! I know what your confession is; you plucked my lily, didn't you?"

"I overheard a few words and I guessed the rest. Why need you have broken the poor flower? Couldn't you have asked me for it? couldn't you wait till to-morrow? I intended to give it to you."

Julie felt that she was blushing, for Antoine scrutinized her closely, and there was a half bitter, half tender irony in his little black eyes.

"Really," she replied, trying to save herself by a Jesuitical expedient, "the accident happened against my desire."

"Good," rejoined Antoine, still staring at her, "put it that way, I like that better."

"Mordié! yes, I like it better. Come, abandon the worthless cause you are trying to plead; condemn Master Julien's madness and disloyalty without reserve; let me punish him as I think best."

"Oh! don't try to lie any more," cried Monsieur Antoine, springing to his feet as if impelled by the quivering of his whole irritable and passionate little being; "it isn't becoming in you to lie, you know! And then it's no use, for I tell you I heard everything, and as I'm no fool I concluded—Julien has taken a fancy to you, and the rascal would tell you so if he dared!"

"I say—I say things as they are. Mademoiselle de Meuil was as proud as you can possibly be; my brother André told her fairy stories, and he ended by making her listen to him. All men and all women are made of the same stuff, I tell you! There's only one question of any importance now: does Julien take your fancy, yes or no?"

"Monsieur Thierry, if I did not know that you have a kind heart, your wretched manners would disgust me! Be kind enough to adopt a different tone, or I shall leave you."

"Ah! you propose to be angry, do you? Your pride has taken hold of you again, and you are going to turn your back on me? Why? All this is no concern of yours! Julien did the crazy thing, it is for him to pay for it."

"No, Monsieur Thierry, that is my place. My bungling caused the accident; if I had not admired and praised the flower too enthusiastically—He felt obliged to offer it to me—courtesy——"

"Poor reasons, poor reasons, my fair lady! The rascal knew perfectly well that I would have thrown the flower, the plant, the garden, aye, and the gardener to boot, at your feet. If he didn't know it, he should have guessed it, and, in any event, he had no right to play the gallant with my property; it's kidnapping, it's an abuse of confidence and a theft. He will live to rue it and his dear mamma will find out what it costs to have an ill-bred son play the courtier to great ladies at just the wrong time."

"Come, come, my good neighbor," cried Madame d'Estrelle, deeply distressed and annoyed, "surely you do not propose to withdraw your favor from them; you are not going to give me the lie, for I placed you on a pedestal; you are not going to break off the friendship which you and I contracted to-day, just for a flower more or less in your collection? Your fortune makes a loss so easily repaired of little consequence."

"You talk very jauntily about it! There are some things which millions can't replace, and which a man of taste considers beyond all price!"

"It is his mother's fault! She encourages him to love you, she scrapes acquaintance with you in order to induce you to do what she did for her husband."

"No! as to that, I give you my word of honor you are wrong, Monsieur Thierry! She is in despair——"

"At what? Ah! you see, she has spoken to you about it, and you knew of the young man's presumption."

Madame d'Estrelle struggled to no purpose. All the prudence of her sex, all the pride of her rank, all her natural shrewdness, and all her familiarity with society went for naught against the rich man's narrow and uncompromising logic. She was as if caught in a vise, and felt shamefaced, awkward, helpless, at the end of a no thoroughfare. What should she do? Turn out this boor who forced her to submit to a distasteful examination, and thereby abandon the cause of the poor Thierrys and turn them over to his vengeance; or restrain herself, defend herself as best she could, and submit to the humiliation of the most untimely of reprimands?

"It seems," she said with sorrowful resignation, "that I made a very great mistake in going into that pavilion! I was very far from having any such idea, I had never seen Master Julien Thierry, and I started out with my mind full of your fine promises, to carry joy to his poor mother! I am well punished now for being so enthusiastic about you, Monsieur Thierry, since you consider that you are entitled to lecture me as if I were a little girl, and to call me to account for the most innocent if not the most honorable step that one woman can take toward another!"

"For that reason you are not the one whom I blame," replied Monsieur Antoine, softened in one direction and proportionately more irritated in the other; "the true culprits are the ones I blame without appeal. Do you know what would have happened if I had entered just at the moment when Master Julien was breaking my lily? Why, I would have broken Master Julien! Yes, as sure as I am talking to you, the head of this cane would have broken his painter's head!"

Madame d'Estrelle was alarmed by Monsieur Antoine's excited, vindictive manner; she was really afraid of him and involuntarily looked about her, as if in search of protection in case his wrath should turn against herself. She fancied that she could hear a rustling in the dense foliage behind the bench, and although it might have been only a bird hopping among the branches, she felt vaguely reassured.

"No, my good neighbor," she rejoined with courageous mildness, "you cannot make me believe that you are a bad man, and you will do nothing unkind to anyone. You may vent your wrath on me alone, within the limits of your rights in that direction. You may scold me—and I will accept the rebuke. I will promise you what I have already promised myself, never to set foot in that pavilion again. What more can I do? Come, tell me."

At that moment the foliage stirred again, and Julien's tame sparrow came and perched on Madame d'Estrelle's shoulder, as if sent by him to ask her forgiveness. She was more deeply moved by that little incident than she chose to admit, and she took the little creature, which was already on familiar terms with her, in her hand, with a sort of affection.

"Hum!" said Monsieur Antoine, whose piercing eyes seemed to possess the power of divination; "that's a strange kind of a companion! Is it yours?"

"A sparrow! Vile beasts! they do nothing but harm. If it wasn't yours—Did Julien give it to you?"

"Nonsense! you think of nothing but Julien!" said Madame d'Estrelle, losing patience; "really I don't know what direction our explanation is taking. I am very, very sorry for what has happened, I regret extremely that I was the cause of it; but can you not tell me how I can repair it, instead of hurling all these offensive insinuations at my head?"

"Yes! have I not promised to go to your house to-morrow to attend a family festival?"

"The christening of my poor Antonia! That is out of the question now. The child is dead, or at all events disfigured. I ought to invite my friends to a funeral. And then, you see, this idea of inviting Madame André and making the best of a bad business with her son—that isn't to my liking—that is to say it is no longer to my liking, unless——"

"Speak," said Madame d'Estrelle eagerly, for she began to think that the rich man, repenting of his munificence, might contemplate a reduction in the price he had offered for the pavilion. "I agree to anything that will indemnify and pacify you."

Master Antoine's vanity was immeasurable. Madame d'Ancourt, whom he had seen an hour earlier, had, in her spite against Julie, puffed him up by confirming his presumptuous hopes. He had returned with the intention of offering himself. Not finding Julie in her salon, he had mustered courage to surprise her in the garden. The incident of the broken lily seemed to hasten forward the opportunity. His brain whirled with insane conceit and he made his declaration.

"Madame," he said, "you force me to it with your pretty words and your gentle manners; I am going to stake all to win all, and if you are angry at what I say, the fault is your own. Let us see! you are not rich, and I know that you weren't born on the steps of a throne. I believe that you are not proud either, since you go to a poor painter's studio and accept his attentions—at my expense!—a good joke, eh? But no matter; let us laugh over it, but let us come to something reasonable at last. It makes no difference if Julien has ancestors on his mother's side, he's my nephew, he's a plebeian. Do you despise him for that?"

"Then his crime is being poor, eh? But suppose he was rich, very rich, then what would you say to him?"

"Do you propose to give him a dowry, so that I can marry him?" cried Madame d'Estrelle in utter amazement.

"You thought that I was suggesting an idiotic performance to you! What is an artist? It would be of no use for me to give him a dowry; money I had earned wouldn't raise him in your eyes, I fancy. Consideration belongs of right to those who have carved out their own lot in life and have earned success by their shrewdness in business. Come, you understand what I mean! I offer you an excellent match, a good-sized fortune, and a name that makes some noise in the world. The man is one who will gratify all your wishes as long as he lives and leave you all his property after his death; who has no former mistresses nor unlawful children, nor debts, nor worries, nor ties of any sort. Lastly he is a man who might be your grandfather, and whom no one will ever accuse you of choosing from caprice or coquetry, but who will do credit to your good sense and your honorable feelings; for you have debts, more debts than property. I know the amount of 'em! It is pretty big, and if Marcel were a good calculator, he wouldn't tell you to go to sleep. Reflect on what I say! Great annoyances are in store for you if you say no, while everybody will congratulate you on making a sensible match. You seem tremendously surprised, and yet your friend the baroness told you—but perhaps she didn't tell you the amount?"

"Five millions, isn't it?" replied Julie, who had become pale and reserved. "So it was you she referred to, and you are talking about yourself?"

"No, Monsieur Thierry," Julie replied with a mighty effort. "On the contrary I am highly honored by your offers, but——"

"But what? my age? Do you suppose I propose to play the lover? No! thank God, I never had that weakness, and I don't propose to make myself ridiculous at my age. I simply propose to be your father by contract, and to employ marriage as a means of making you my heiress. Well, that's enough of talk. You must say yes or no, for I am not of a disposition to remain in doubt, and I don't choose to be humiliated, do you understand?"

Monsieur Antoine spoke in a curiously imperious tone; Julie was afraid that a refusal would exasperate him.

"You go too fast," she said; "as it happens, I am naturally hesitating and timid. You must give me time to reflect."

"Then you don't say no?" rejoined the old man, evidently flattered by the hope that he was allowed to retain.

"I say nothing," replied Madame d'Estrelle, who had risen and was walking toward her house with some anxiety. "At this moment I am utterly bewildered by an offer which I did not expect. Give me a few days to think, to consult my feelings.—Really, I am deeply moved, deeply touched by your friendship, and also very much alarmed, for I had sworn to remain free! Adieu, Monsieur Thierry, leave me! I really long to be left alone with my conscience, and I do not want you to try to take it by surprise by your kindness."

Julie made her escape, and Uncle Antoine left the garden, forgetting the pavilion, the picture, the lily, everything, and in the throes of a fever of hope which made him act more like a madman than ever; but, when he found himself on Rue de Babylone, in front of the pavilion, he was seized with a fierce longing to torment and puzzle and confound his relations. He rang and was admitted by Marcel, who was anxiously awaiting the result of his interview with Julie.

"Well," he said abruptly, "where is my plant? has Master Julien finished my picture?"

"Go into the studio," said Marcel; "you will see your picture all finished, and your lily as fresh as if nothing had happened to it."

"Oh! yes," muttered Antoine satirically, "of course it did it good to be broken!"

And he entered the studio with his hat on, without glancing at or seeing his sister-in-law, who was sitting in her little straw arm-chair in the window-recess, thoughtful and downcast. He walked straight to his lily, examined the fracture, and looked carefully at the flower, which was still blooming in the moist earth. Then he looked at the picture of the Antonia and said:

Then he walked across the studio, passed close to Madame Thierry and saw her, put his hand to the brim of his hat, saying in a surly tone: "Your servant, madame!" returned to Marcel, laughed in his face for no apparent cause, like a crazy man, and at last strode toward the door, frantic because he could find nothing to say to satisfy his thirst for revenge, without sacrificing the good opinion of his conduct which he wished his fiancée to retain.

"Come, come, uncle," he said, "we must find out where we are! Has the Comtesse d'Estrelle obtained our forgiveness, or must I sell my office to pay for the damage?"

"The Comtesse d'Estrelle," replied the old man, "is a judicious person, who knows how to tell the difference between people without brains and a man of sound sense. You will see the proof of it some day or other."

Madame Thierry, who could not endure her brother-in-law's overbearing manner, and who fancied that he meant to defy her, rose to go up to her room. Antoine bowed very slightly and added:

"I didn't say that for your benefit, Madame André. I have nothing to say to you."

"Nor I to you," retorted the widow, in a tone whose disdainful bitterness she strove in vain to stifle, as a matter of prudence.

Julien chafed at his bit in silence, incapable of humiliating himself by apologies, and Marcel followed with a keen glance the horticulturist's awkward and excited movements.

"What's the matter, uncle?" he said when Madame Thierry had gone out. "You are brooding over something good or something evil. Tell us the truth, that will be the better way."

"The truth, the truth," rejoined Monsieur Antoine, "we shall see the truth, aye, and know it when the time comes! And perhaps everybody won't laugh at it!"

Julien, who was still painting, lost his patience. He put down his palette, and, removing the carelessly twisted handkerchief which the painters of that time wore in the studio instead of a cap, he walked straight to Monsieur Thierry and forcibly interrupted his noisy, excited promenade. Then, with a serious and determined expression, he asked him to explain his vague threats.

"Monsieur my uncle," he said, "you act as if you propose to drive me to extremities; but I shall not on that account fail in the respect I owe you. Consider simply, I beg you, that I am not a child who can be made to tremble by contracting the eyebrows and assuming a deep voice. You would do better to observe and understand the real fact, that is to say the sorrow which I really feel for having offended you. Do not ask me how that disaster happened: oblivion of one's surroundings, absent-mindedness cannot be explained; but, since the thing is done, what do you propose to do to punish me, or what do you require me to do to atone for it? I am ready to prove my repentance or to submit to the consequences of my wrong-doing. Decide and do not threaten any more; that will be more worthy of you and of me."

Monsieur Antoine stopped short, apparently unmoved, but in reality greatly mortified by the superiority of the defendant's attitude over the judge's at that moment. He was afraid in a measure of appearing ridiculous, and a diabolical idea suggested itself to his mind as a means of putting an end to his embarrassment.

"Everything depends on Madame d'Estrelle," he said. "If she wishes, if she demands it, I will do all that I had promised to do for your mother, and I will even forgive you, notwithstanding the wicked thing you did; but I will do it on the condition that she comes to my house to-morrow with the rest of you, as she promised."

"But," said Marcel, "if everything is made up between you, didn't you remind her just now of the appointment?"

"I am not speaking to you, attorney," retorted Antoine; "do me the favor to leave the room, I want to talk with Master Julien alone."

"Go on, go on," said Marcel. "I am just going, for someone has been waiting in my office for me fully an hour. I will return and find out what you have decided."

When Julien and his uncle were alone, the latter assumed an even more comical air of solemnity.

"Listen," he said, "I want you to do an errand for me. You must go to the hôtel d'Estrelle."

"I count on your not being admitted. You will carry a letter, wait for the answer in the antechamber, and bring it back to me."

"Very well," said Julien, thinking that he could stop at the porter's lodge. "Where is the letter?"

"Here," said Julien, opening the drawer of his table. The horticulturist sat down and wrote rapidly; then he called Julien, who dissembled his impatience by removing his working jacket and putting on his coat, which he had dropped on a chair.

"Not yet. I want you to correct my note. I don't pride myself on my knowledge, and I may have made mistakes in spelling. Read it over for me, read it aloud, and then correct it, periods, commas and everything."

Julien, feeling that a trap was being set for him, cast a rapid glance over the few lines which his uncle had written in a firm hand. His head swam, and he was very near tearing the paper in his indignation; but he thought that he was being subjected to a test by that crabbed, eccentric mortal. He restrained his wrath, met without flinching the ferociously searching gaze that was fixed upon him, and read in a firm voice the contents of the note:

"Well," queried the old man when Julien had finished reading, "are there any mistakes?"

"Well, what do you say to that?" continued the uncle, writing Madame d'Estrelle's name on the envelope.

"The purchase of your house at Sèvres and its presentation to you depend on that letter."

"In the street, in front of the house, where I will wait for you. Let us both go."

They went out together. Julien went straight to the porter, closely watched by his uncle, who did not lose sight of him; but, instead of entrusting the letter to that functionary, as he had determined at first, he said to him that he wished to speak to the valet de chambre, and walked rapidly across the courtyard without turning. When he reached the antechamber Julien delivered the letter and sat down on the waiting bench, with the manner of one who does not expect to be received; but he said to the valet:

"Please inform madame la comtesse that, if there is any reply, Monsieur Antoine Thierry's nephew is waiting here to carry it to him."

"Madame la comtesse desires to ask you some questions. Take the trouble to walk this way."

He opened a door at one side of the room and walked ahead. Julien followed him through a dark corridor; then the servant opened another door, placed a chair for him and withdrew.

Julien was alone in a handsome dining-room, the main door of which was opposite him. A moment later that door opened and Madame d'Estrelle appeared. She was very pale and excited.

"I receive you here," she said, "because I have visitors in my salon, and I cannot express myself before anyone on the subject which brings you here. Did Monsieur Antoine himself hand you this letter?"

"In order to find out whether my uncle is mad enough to be locked up, or fiendishly cruel."

"In other words—you were not sure—you wished to know if I had given him any right to write such a letter?"

"I did not believe it, and I expected that you would order me to be turned away without a reply."

"Nothing, madame, except that you can do nothing more cruel than leave me in uncertainty."

"Why should you take such a great interest in my affairs? Am I responsible to anyone?"

"Oh! madame, do not speak to me in that tone," cried Julien, fairly beside himself. "Either my uncle's wealth has imposed silence on your repugnance, and in that case I have absolutely nothing to say to you, or else you submitted to his impertinent offers with a patience which misled him; and if you were so patient, so kind as that to him, I can easily guess the reason. You were afraid that Monsieur Antoine's resentment would fall on us!"

"That is true, Master Julien; I thought of your mother, I avoided giving him an answer, I asked for time to reflect, I hoped that, in order to please me, he would first keep the promise he made me to restore Madame Thierry to happiness and comfort. That was wrong perhaps, for I was not frank, and that is contrary to my nature. Indeed, could I believe that that irascible, ill-mannered old man would begin by trying to compromise me? And yet that is just what is happening, and God knows what disagreeable consequences this may have for me! but I am wrong to think about it. When I see my endeavors to assist you come to naught, I am selfish to complain, and really my greatest sorrow consists in my being unable to be of any service to you after being the cause of your disaster. And what am I to do with a man who takes my fear for coquetry and my silence for an avowal?"

Julien knelt on one knee, and as Madame d'Estrelle, surprised and terrified, was about to fly, he said:

"Fear nothing from me, madame; this is no stage declaration; I am not mad, and I am absolutely serious in thanking you on my knees in my mother's name. Your kindness is of the sort which men adore and which no words can describe. Now," he added, rising, "I have the right to say to you that I am a man, and that I should despise myself if, even for love of the most loving of mothers, I should accept the sacrifice of your pride for a single instant. No, madame, no! Monsieur Antoine Thierry must not be spared, he must not believe for another instant that he can aspire—Poor man! he is mad; but madmen need to be held in check like inconvenient and dangerous children. I will take charge of him, and with your permission I will go at once and disabuse his mind forever."

"Ah! mon Dieu! you will go yourself?" said Julie. "No! do not drive him to extremities; I will write."

"But I do not choose that you shall write," replied Julien with a proud vehemence which did not displease Madame d'Estrelle. "Do you think that I am a child to be afraid of his anger, or a coward to leave you exposed to his importunities? Do you think that my mother would be any more willing than myself to accept favors which would cost you the shadow of a falsehood? Is it for you to deal tenderly with anyone, and suffer for our sake, who would give our lives to spare you the slightest suffering? No, madame, learn to know us better. My mother's sentiments are as lofty as your own; she accepted Monsieur Antoine's benefactions with the very greatest reluctance. To-day she would blush to do it; she will detest the mere thought when she knows what they cost you. And as for me—I am of no consequence in your eyes and shall never be anything in your life; but permit a man, who feels that he is a man of spirit, to tell you that he fears neither poverty, nor vengeance, nor any sort of persecution. I have done my duty and I will continue to do it; I will support my mother until she draws her last breath, and if it is necessary to contend against the whole world, I shall be able to do it for her. Let this reassure you touching the fate of her you love so dearly. If only your friendship were concerned, she would prefer it to all Monsieur Antoine's wealth, and for my own part, though I had but this moment on earth to tell you that I love you, I should esteem myself happy and proud to have been able to say it to you without offence and without presumption; for I speak to your heart, and there is not a shadow of a sentiment in my heart that is unworthy of you. Adieu, madame! live happily and at peace; and if you ever need a man to do something for you that is beyond the power of all other men, remember that such a man exists, poor, humble, hidden in a corner, but capable of moving mountains; for when his mother's welfare is at stake, he is determination and faith personified."

Julien left the room without asking or waiting for another word from Madame d'Estrelle, and in a twinkling he was in the street. Antoine was awaiting him with feverish impatience; he was on the point of bursting into the hôtel like a bomb when Julien reappeared.

"Come, monsieur," said Julien, offering him his arm to cross the street. "There is too much noise here for us to hear each other."

They entered into an open field where there was a sign: For Sale; and Julien began thus:

"Monsieur my uncle, Madame d'Estrelle read your letter and summoned me to her presence so that I might bring you her verbal response."

"Madame la comtesse, considering that your mind must have been disturbed when you asked for her hand, was afraid to be alone with you and put an end to the interview by a promise to reflect; but she had already reflected, and this is her decision. She regrets that she will be unable to come to your house to-morrow, and she informs you that from this moment she will no longer be at home."

"You do know, monsieur. Didn't you tell me that my mother's fortune and my own depended on Madame d'Estrelle's encouragement of your matrimonial plans? That is why I grasped so eagerly the excuse you gave me to go to her house, hoping that the extraordinary nature of your letter would induce her to receive me. That is something you did not anticipate."

"Yes, I did, mordieu!" cried Monsieur Antoine; "I said to myself that that thing would happen if——"

"Excuse me, you want me to guess. You thought that I was foolish enough, impertinent enough, mad enough to aspire to that lady's favor?"

"And now I am sure of it! You told her of your sentiments, and I see your air of triumph. At the same time you are rubbing your hands because you have shown me the door! You will go and tell your dear mother this, of course! You will say to her: 'The rich man gobbled the bait! He thought that by tossing us a crust of bread and taking a young wife, he would make sport of us and disinherit us! Well, he has succeeded simply in covering himself with shame. He will grow old alone, he will die unmarried, and we shall be rich in spite of him.'"

"You are mistaken, monsieur," rejoined Julien with perfect self-possession. "I formed no such contemptible schemes, and I shall never do anything of the kind. You may marry to-morrow, if you choose, and whom you choose, and I shall be overjoyed, provided always that my mother's dignity and mine are not at stake in your undertaking. This is what I desired to say to Madame d'Estrelle, and what I say to you. And now I have only to remember that you are my uncle, and humbly to present you my respects."

Julien was about to go away after bowing low to Monsieur Antoine. But he recalled him in an imperious tone.

"I must believe you, knowing that you are incapable of deceiving a person who relies upon you."

The blood rose in the young artist's cheeks; he gazed earnestly at Monsieur Antoine, trying to persuade himself that he was really so irresponsible that his invectives should not affect a self-possessed man. Antoine divined his thought and made an effort to be calmer.

"Well, let us say no more about that!" he said. "I will go and pick up the ruins and the picture; I have lost my outlay of kindness of heart and confidence. It will teach me not to depart from my ideas and principles again! Walk first and don't say another word!"

They returned to the studio. There Monsieur Antoine, silent as hatred, took the flower, the plant, the picture, and refusing to accept anyone's assistance, without looking at Julien, without moving his lips, he left the pavilion and did not appear again.

Marcel soon returned and asked Julien what had taken place. Julien told him frankly and unhesitatingly in Madame Thierry's presence.

"Now," he added, "my inconsiderate conduct alarmed you, I know. You thought that I was as mad as Uncle Antoine, and my mother is terrified by a sentiment which she thinks is likely to be disastrous to me. Undeceive yourself and be calm, my dear mother, and do you, Marcel, give me back the esteem which you should entertain for a man of sense. One may be such a man, even if he has been guilty of an imprudence, and I realize that I was very reckless when I offered our benefactress a thing which did not belong to me. That was an impulse of gratitude, sadly misplaced, it is true, but which did not scandalize her, because she saw in it nothing more than an emotion that was worthy of her and consistent with the respect that is her due. I flatter myself that she is even more convinced of it since she granted me an interview, and I swear to you both, by all I hold most sacred, by filial love and faithful friendship, that there shall be nothing unpleasant to Madame d'Estrelle, nothing distressing to you, nothing unbecoming on my part in my future conduct. Let us not regret the house at Sèvres, my dear mother: we could not obtain it unless Madame d'Estrelle became Madame Antoine Thierry, and you certainly do not think that could ever have come to pass. As for you, my dear Marcel, I bless you for all the trouble you have taken, but surely you are convinced now that it was all thrown away, and that Uncle Antoine gives nothing for nothing. Let us be calm now, let us take up our lives where we dropped them when this evil dream of wealth began. I still have arms to work with and a heart to love you, and indeed, from this day forth, I feel more zealous, braver and surer of the future than I have ever been."

This time Julien was speaking the truth and not simply forcing himself to be brave in order to comfort his mother. He felt, not perfectly tranquil, but strong; his two interviews with Julie in quick succession had given his heart a new direction, a more unerring impulse. He had found in her presence the inspiration which gave full play to the seriousness and the generosity of his passion. He was sure that he had laid bare his heart to her, and that he had neither terrified nor insulted her. Did he believe that she loved him? No, but it may be that he had a vague feeling that she did, and there was a mysterious enjoyment in his reverie. He had attained a perfect understanding of his mission in the life of exalted and unselfish sentiment which was really his normal life. What he had said, he proposed to do, and he had strength to do it. To love in silence, to seek nothing, to obtain nothing by surprise, and to seize nothing except an opportunity to devote himself unreservedly to his mission, such was his plan, his determination, his profession of faith, so to speak.

"And now," he thought, "it may be that I shall suffer terribly despite my determination; but I shall so enjoy suffering nobly and holding my peace for love of her, that I shall triumph over my suffering, and my mother will not again feel its rebound. I must be very strong in the struggle between my instincts and my duties. And why should I not? I have always loved lofty ideas and sentiments which are beyond the reach of the common herd. As I am obliged to be a man, and as I am persuaded that duty is found in family ties, I shall doubtless do some day as Marcel has done: I shall marry a virtuous woman, who will be thereafter my best friend. Until then I propose to remain free and chaste. I propose to love without hope, and if possible, without desire, this nobly born Julie who can never be mine; I will overcome the desire, I will carry fraternal feeling to the point of sublimity, and I will nourish all my faculties with the sublime. I will be to other people only a very patient, very amiable young working man, seeking grace and charm in baskets of roses; but by dint of studying the divine mystery of purity in the hearts of flowers, one may obtain a revelation of sanctity in love. It seems to me a fine thing to say to oneself that one might scheme to surprise the virtue of the woman one loves, and that one loves her too well to attempt it. The life of which I dream is all meditation and sentiment. Very well; I will live it as long as possible. I will live by my thoughts as other people live by their acts, and it may be that I shall be the happiest of men! I shall feel that I am sustained by an enthusiasm which will not be worn to shreds by disappointments. I shall live and breathe alone and every moment in the beautiful, the pure and the great, with even more satisfaction than my poor father, who was conscious of a craving for it, but who thought that he could gratify his craving amid luxurious surroundings or in the society of this or that great personage. I shall need nothing of that sort, and I shall be far, far richer, having no other desire than to be satisfied with myself."

In soaring thus resolutely into the regions of the ideal, Julien was in truth following a secret tendency which had developed in him early in life. He had received an exceedingly good education, and, while studying his art assiduously, had read a great deal; but, being naturally inclined to enthusiasm of an austere sort, he did not indulge his tastes in all directions or plunge into all sorts of pleasure. Of all that his youth had fed upon, he had revelled in the great Corneille with the most satisfaction and benefit. There he had found, in the loftiest form, the strongest and most daring aspirations to heroism. He preferred teaching of that sort put in action, those noble virtues manifesting and giving expression to themselves, to the discussions of contemporary philosophy. This is not equivalent to saying that he despised the spirit of his time, or that he held aloof from the extraordinary upheaval of ideas then in progress. On the contrary he was one of the sturdiest products of that period which is unique in all history in respect to its magnificent illusions pending the formation of awe-inspiring resolutions. Those were the last days of the monarchy, and very few people then thought of overturning it. At all events Julien was not one of those who thought of it; he went very far beyond anticipation of any event whatsoever in politics. He was intoxicated with the discoveries and dreams of science, moral and physical, recently set free, en masse so to speak, from the clouds of the past. Lagrange, Bailly, Lalande, Berthollet, Monge, Condorcet and Lavoisier were already revolutionizing thought. When we reflect upon that rapid succession of fortunate experiments which, in a few years, produced astronomy from astrology, chemistry from alchemy, and replaced blind prejudice by experimental analysis all along the line of human knowledge, we realize that by making war on superstitions, the philosophers of the 18th century freed individual genius from its fetters simultaneously with the religious and social conscience of nations. What presumption then, what excitement, what intoxication in these first reachings out toward the future! The human intellect has hailed the bright sun of progress, and already it thinks to take possession of all its rays. No sooner has the first balloon arisen on its wings of flame, than two men risk the crossing of the Straits of Dover. Instantly mankind cries: "We are masters of the roads through the air, we are the inhabitants of the sky!"

At the period in which the action of our story happens to be laid, this noble beginning of the new ideas had found its formula in the word perfectibility. It was Condorcet who eloquently outlined the doctrine, and taking no account of human weakness, predicted for it a boundless destiny. He believed in infinity so absolutely that he hoped to find the secret of the destruction of death, and everybody who used his mind, everybody who read was beginning to believe with him in the indefinite prolongation of physical life. Parmentier believed moreover that he could banish forever the spectre of famine by acclimatizing the potato. Mesmer believed that he had discovered a mysterious agent, the source of all marvels. Saint-Martin proclaimed the rehabilitation of the human soul and illumined the terrors of the old-fashioned dogmas with the dogma of infinite light. Cagliostro pretended to revive ancient magic in a natural and comprehensible way; in a word the vertigo of the future had set every brain in a whirl, from the most prosaic to the most romantic, and, at the height of that intense excitement, the present was a trifling obstacle which no one deigned to notice. The old monarchy, the unbending clergy, were still on their feet, striving to retain their crumbling power; but liberty had been inaugurated in America, and France felt that her day was at hand. She had no thought of bloodshed; pleasant chimeras exclude ideas of revenge; on the eve of the terrible storm men's minds were making holiday, and an indescribable feverish grasping for the ideal paved the way for the magnificent outburst of '89.

Julien was full of that faith and determination which seems to descend to earth providentially at the moment fixed for mighty struggles; but with it all there was a certain calmness due to the direction, the habit and the temperament of his thought. There was a certain philosophical mysticism, not in the stage of discussion but in the stage of instinct, and a sort of craving to love. If he had not loved a woman, he would have loved liberty to fanaticism. Love consecrated him to self-sacrifice. As soon as Julie's image filled his heart, he no longer thought of himself except as a force which might serve to protect Julie. Did he entertain the idea that she could or would be likely to belong to him? Yes, he undoubtedly did, a confused idea, sometimes imperious, but valiantly combated. He had no prejudices; he was not, like his uncle Antoine, dazzled by rank, title and show; he knew that Julie was born in modest station and that her fortune was much impaired. Moreover, he felt that he was her equal, for he was one of those men of the third estate, who, being filled with a legitimate and tenacious pride, were beginning to say to one another: "The third estate is everything," just as they said later: "The people are everything," and just as they will say some day: "Everyone is everything," denying no kind of nobility, whether due to the sword, the toga, the factory or the plough. Thus Julien did not look upon the Comtesse d'Estrelle as a woman placed above him by circumstances, but by personal merit. That merit he exaggerated possibly in his own mind; it is the privilege of love to tend constantly toward the loftier regions of the soul, and to believe that it is summoned to the conquest of divinities. So that in his passion admirable humility was combined with boundless pride.

"I am not worthy of such a woman," he said to himself; "I must become so, and when, by dint of patience, unselfishness, self-denial and respect, I have succeeded—why, then perhaps I shall feel that I have the right to say to her: 'Love me.'"

But he sometimes wondered if that day would come before the unforeseen events of the future had disposed of Julie's fate; then he would say to himself:

"Very well; I shall possess her esteem, perhaps her friendship, and the time I shall have devoted to governing myself with dignity will not be wasted."

Madame Thierry was surprised and overjoyed therefore to find that his cheerfulness and all the symptoms of physical and moral well-being reappeared suddenly, on the very day of this momentous episode.

"My friend," she said to Marcel when they were alone for a moment, "I dare not tell you what is passing through my mind; but he has such a happy look! Mon Dieu! do you believe it is possible?"

"What?" said Marcel. "Oh! yes, you are speaking of his visit to Madame d'Estrelle! Well, such things have been known, my dear aunt; he is good-looking enough and agreeable enough to please a great lady; but she is ruined and can extricate herself only by a wealthy marriage, which it is our duty to desire for her, on the condition that the man is not too old. I do not believe she is as bold and courageous as you were, and, moreover, the plan that succeeded with you is generally ruinous; a great passion is a number that wins only once in a hundred thousand times in the lottery of destiny! Let us not wish that for Julien and for her!"

"No, I don't wish it; it is too dangerous, as you say; but if she does take a fancy to him, what will happen?"

"I have no idea; but she is virtuous and he is an honorable man; they will both suffer. It would be better to separate them if possible."

"To be sure! that is what I said to you in the beginning. But what a pity! They are both so handsome, so young and so good! Ah! fate is very unjust sometimes! If my poor husband had left Julien the fortune we once had, he might have been a suitable match for her, as she is poor and without family pride! Alas! may God forgive me! this is the first time I ever blamed my André. Let us say no more about it, Marcel, let us say no more about it!"

"We must think about it, none the less," replied the solicitor, "and not let Julien's heart burn too fiercely. To-day, it is fireworks, because he probably has some hope; but to-morrow it may be a conflagration."

"I don't know. I would like to be able to confess Madame d'Estrelle, and Uncle Antoine above all, for I am not deceived by his philosophy, and I am afraid—"

Madame d'Estrelle had been almost made ill by all the excitement of the day. Julien's visit had proved to be the finishing touch; but, as soon as he left her, the sort of fever which Monsieur Antoine's performance had caused gave place to a not unpleasant feeling of lassitude.

"I have a friend," she said to herself, "a most agreeable friend, that is certain, though the whole world should make sport of me for trusting so implicitly in the word of a man whom I did not know a few hours ago; but should I accept this zealous friendship? is it not dangerous to him and to me? To be sure, he did not ask me to accept it. He went away like a man who is dependent on nobody and who loves without permission. Since he says that he has no hope, has he not a right to love? And what could I do to prevent him?"

Julie was perfectly well aware, in her inmost conscience, that she should not have received Julien after Madame Thierry's revelation concerning his feeling for her.

"After all," she said, "why did I receive him, when my first impulse was to send him that simple yet conclusive message: 'There is no reply!' That would have rid me of uncle and nephew at one stroke. But did the nephew deserve to be humiliated? Did he not come simply to rescue his honor from a detestable snare laid by his uncle? Had he not the right to say to me thereupon all that he did say to me, and was I offended by what he took the liberty of adding on his own account, although it was perhaps a little too sentimental? ought I to have been offended? It is of no use for me to ask the question, I cannot answer it. He offered himself, he gave himself to me, without asking for anything. He made me a present of his heart and his life, whether I would or not. He did not speak to me like a lover, no, indeed! but like a slave and a master at once. All this is very strange, and my brain is in a whirl. I do not know what it is that I feel for him. The only thing that is certain is that I believe in him."

It seemed to Julie as well as to Madame Thierry and Marcel that the morrow of that strange day would probably be fraught with important events. In vain did they question themselves concerning Monsieur Antoine's wrath: to their great amazement neither the morrow nor the days following brought about any change in their respective situations. The horticulturist went into the country, no one knew where. There was no place for him to go, at least within the knowledge of Marcel, who thought that he knew all his business, but who really knew only a part of it. When he was thoroughly convinced of his uncle's absence, he became anxious about him; but he was shown orders written by his own hand, which his head gardener received each morning, detailing minutely the nature and extent of the care to be bestowed on certain delicate plants. These horticultural bulletins were undated and without stamps. They were brought by the ex-armorer's valet, an old sailor, who was the slave of his orders, obedient as a negro, dumb as an old stump.

"Well!" said Marcel to Madame Thierry, "he is in the sulks, that is certain; or else he is ashamed of his madness and has gone into hiding for a little time. Let us hope that he will return cured of his matrimoniomania, and that he will consider his honor involved in carrying out a certain bargain relative to this pavilion. You need the indemnity, and I do not conceal from you that Madame d'Estrelle is greatly in need of the promised amount. I don't know what vicious insect is pricking her creditors, but suddenly they all begin to display the most extraordinary impatience and anxiety. They go so far as to threaten to transfer their claims to one principal creditor, who would surely speculate on my client's embarrassment, and that is the worst thing that could possibly happen."

"I am not at all easy in my mind," he said two days later to Madame d'Estrelle, who had just been to visit her father-in-law, who was ill; "I am afraid monsieur le marquis may die unexpectedly before he has settled up your affairs."

"I place no reliance on his good-will toward me," replied Julie; "but I cannot believe that he will leave me at the mercy of the count's creditors, when only a few last steps are needed to settle with them. Of course we must expect the childish fear of robbing himself which always haunts selfish old men; but after him——"

"After him?" echoed Marcel. "The devil is after him, I mean at his heels. His wife is a good-for-nothing; I am afraid of her; she doesn't love you, and she is nothing to you, since your husband was not her son."

"Mon Dieu! you look at the dark side of everything, my dear solicitor! The marquis is neither very old nor very ill. He must have made his will. The marchioness is very pious, and what she would not do from affection, she will do as a matter of duty. Do not you discourage me, who have always encouraged me."

"I should not be discouraged myself if I could put my hand on my singular old uncle! Let him buy the pavilion and pay for it, and that gives us two or three months' respite. We shall have time to sell the little farm in the Beauvoisis or make it over to the creditors at an agreed price, otherwise we shall be brutally sold out and lose a hundred per cent. of these poor scraps, which are of some value to-day!"

Julie, who, at other times, had been much distressed concerning her situation, had reached that stage of lassitude which takes the place of courage. Her philosophy surprised and irritated Marcel.

"Deuce take me!" he whispered to Julien's mother, "one would say that she asks nothing better now than to be turned into the street!"

Was that, in truth, Madame d'Estrelle's secret thought? Did she say to herself that, being poor, and abandoned by her husband's family, she no longer owed so much consideration to the name she bore, and that she could disappear from the world's stage to live as she chose and marry according to her inclination?

Yes and no. At times she dreamed again that dream of a happiness hitherto unknown, which had come to her like a fascinating vision in Julien's studio. At other times she became the Comtesse d'Estrelle once more, and asked herself in dismay how she could break with all her surroundings and her habits, and whether she could endure blame and contempt, after having been so loudly praised and so respected up to that day by a limited but select circle of persons highly considered in society.

It is well known that period was marked by a violent and determined reaction in certain aristocratic circles against the invasion of the democracy. Perhaps no other period in history presents such strange contrasts. On the one hand public opinion, queen of the new world, proclaimed the doctrines of equality, contempt for social distinctions, the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot; on the other, the ruling powers, terrified by a progress which they dared not oppose, attempted a tardy resistance which was destined to hurl them into the abyss; but to one whose horizon was narrow, to whom the morrow was not revealed, that resistance assumed formidable proportions, and a weak and gentle woman like Madame d'Estrelle was certain to be alarmed by it. Like all of her caste she fancied that she could read the destiny of France in the conduct of the court; and there were times when the king, in dire dismay, tried to resuscitate the monarchy of Louis XIV.; distressing and vain efforts, which, however, when looked at from a certain point of view, seemed serious enough to irritate the people and to increase the arrogance of the privileged classes. The court and city had acclaimed Voltaire's triumph; on the morrow of that triumph the clergy refused him a tomb. Mirabeau had written a masterpiece against the arbitrary use of lettres de cachet. The king had said of Beaumarchais: "If his play—the Marriage of Figaro—is acted, we may as well destroy the Bastille!" The third estate grew in enlightenment, in ambition, in real worth; the court reëstablished privileges in the army as well as among the clergy, and decided—which Cardinal de Richelieu would not have dared to do—that, in order to be a military officer or a prelate, an applicant must prove four generations of noble blood. The American Constitution had just proclaimed the principles of Jean-Jacques's Social Contract; Washington and Lafayette were dreaming of the enfranchisement of the slaves; the French ministry granted additional facilities to the slave trade; the lower clergy became more democratic from day to day; the Sorbonne tried to pick a quarrel with Buffon, and the upper clergy demanded a new law to repress the art of writing; public opinion was aroused against capital punishment, the preliminary torture was still in use. The queen had protected Beaumarchais; Raynal was forced to go into exile.

These attempts at reaction in the midst of the onward rush of the age found an echo in the religious coteries; and the greater nobility, generally speaking, upbraided those of its members who had allowed themselves to be fascinated by the seductions of the new philosophy. In the conservative salons, the king and queen were overwhelmed with maledictions and sarcasm when they seemed inclined to abandon the theory of the royal good pleasure. The aristocrats clung to that theory, they believed that everything was safe when they added a stone to the powerless dam erected to stem the revolutionary spirit, and yet no one suspected the swift motion of the flood nor the imminence of the inundation. Everything was translated into bitter satire, ballads and caricatures. They pretended to despise the danger to the point of laughing pityingly at it.

Those persons who were of Julie's immediate circle were of the same mild and timid disposition to which her own mild timidity naturally inclined her; but outside of that little circle, where extravagance in any form was frowned upon, she felt the pressure of a large and more formidable circle, that of the Comte d'Estrelle's family, an arrogant family, irritated by her dumb resistance to absolute opinions; and again, outside of that dreaded circle, which she carefully avoided, there was a still more powerful and threatening one, that of the Marquis d'Estrelle's second wife. That circle, composed exclusively of bigots, opposed to all progress, bitterly contemptuous of philosophers, openly hostile to the omnipotent Voltaire himself, permeated with all the prejudices of birth, fiercely tenacious of its alleged right, was to Julie a subject of terror, puerile perhaps but profound and increasing. The marchioness was well-known to be a covetous, evil-minded, dishonorable woman, and we have seen that the Baronne d'Ancourt, despite her own retrograde ideas, spoke of her, as well as of her environment, with great aversion. Julie was very slightly acquainted with her, and strove to believe that she was sincere in her piety; but she was afraid of her, and, when she questioned herself concerning the state of dread and depression in which she was living, she saw before her the disgusting spectre of that gaunt person, with the greenish eye and pitiless tongue. At such times, from very excess of terror, she tried to apologize for her when she spoke of her, or to impose silence on those of her friends who ventured to call her a harpy or a bird of evil omen.

Naturally poor Julie abhorred the opinions of the marchioness and her circle; but she had not had enough experience, she did not sufficiently appreciate the general tendency of her time to realize the utter puerility of the persecutions she would have had to undergo if she had resolved to live in accordance with the dictates of her heart and her conscience. In that cage of prejudice she was like a bird which thinks that the world has formed itself into a cage about him, and which no longer understands the breath of the wind among the leaves and the flight of other birds through space.

"There may be happy people," she said to herself, "but how far away they are. And how can I join them?"

In like manner, on the eve of a terrible revolution, the prisoners of the past wept over their chains and believed that they were riveted upon them for all eternity. Nevertheless Julie, the greater part of the time, forgot this whole matter of external facts to lose herself in vague contemplations and in secret preoccupations of a new sort. We shall soon see what the subject of them was, and how great difficulty that generous but timid heart had in coming to terms with itself.

A fortnight had passed since the disaster to the Antonia, and Madame d'Estrelle had neither seen nor heard of Julien. She might have believed that he had never existed and that their two interviews were a dream. Madame Thierry had not set foot in the garden, and when Julie, surprised at her continued absence, sent to inquire for her, the answer was that she was a little indisposed—nothing alarming—but forced to keep her room.

Marcel, when she questioned him, evaded her questions, confirmed the statement as to his aunt's slight indisposition, but went into no details. Julie dared not insist; she divined that her neighbor was determined to break off every sort of relation, every pretext for communication, even indirect, between her and Julien.

At last, one morning, Madame Thierry reappeared, when Julie least expected her. In reply to Julie's reserved and timid questions, she said effusively:

"My dear countess, you must forgive me for a bad dream I had, which has vanished now. I judged too hastily, I was foolishly alarmed, and I frightened you with my chimeras. I thought that my son had the presumption to love you, I was so sure of it that it has taken this past fortnight to disabuse me of the idea. So forget what I said to you and give back to my poor child the esteem which he has never ceased to deserve. He does not raise his eyes or his thoughts to you. He venerates you as he ought, and if you should need someone to die for you, he would grasp the opportunity; but there is no romantic passion in his devotion, simply fervent and heartfelt gratitude. He has sworn to me that it is so. I doubted his word at first, but I was wrong. I have watched him; I have done better than that, I have played the spy for a fortnight, and now I am reassured. He eats, he sleeps, he talks, he goes in and out, and works cheerily; in a word, he is not in love: he does not try to see you, he speaks of you with tranquil admiration, he does not seem to desire an opportunity to attract your eyes, nor will he ever seek it. Forgive my folly, and love me as before."

Julie accepted this perfectly sincere declaration of Madame Thierry with gracious satisfaction. They talked of something else and remained together an hour; then they parted, congratulating each other on having no further subject of discomfort, and on being able to renew their relations without agitation or danger to anyone.

How did it happen that when she was alone once more, Julie was overwhelmed by an inexplicable depression? She sought the cause to no purpose, and vented her spleen on the next visitors who came. Her old friend Madame Desmorges seemed intolerably loquacious; the old Duc de Quesnoy as dull and tiresome as a blacksmith's hammer; her cousin, Madame la Présidente Boursault, prudish and hypocritical; the abbé—there was always an abbe in every private circle in those days—conceited and insipid. And, when Camille came to dress her hair at the usual hour, she pettishly dismissed her, saying:

Then she recalled her, and, impelled by a sudden caprice, asked her if the usual period for semi-mourning had not expired within three days.

"Why, yes, madame," said Camille, "it is all over! and madame la comtesse does very wrong not to stop wearing it. If she continues to wear it, it will have a very bad effect."

"People will say that madame is prolonging her grief for economy, to wear out her gray gowns."

"That is most excellent reasoning, my dear, and I bow to it. Bring me a pink dress at once."

"Pink? No, madame, it is too soon for that. People would say that madame wore mourning reluctantly, and that she changed her mind with her dress. Madame should wear a pretty dress of royal blue with white flowers."

"Very good! But haven't all my dresses gone out of style in the two years I have been in mourning?"

"No, madame, for I have looked after them! I have cut the sleeves over and changed the trimming on the waist. With bows of white satin and a lace head-dress, madame will be as stylish as possible."

Camille looked at her mistress in surprise. She did not understand, she thought it was an attack of the vapors, and began to arrange her, as the phrase went in those days, afraid to break the silence. Julie, depressed and distraught, allowed herself to be dressed. And when her maid had retired, carrying away the gray dresses which became her property, she looked at herself from head to foot in a long mirror. She was fascinatingly dressed, and as lovely as an angel. That is why, as her heart continued to ask: What is the use? she hid her face in her hands and began to cry like a child.

If Julien had been a libertine, he could have adopted no better plan to arouse Madame d'Estrelle's passion. The days succeeded one another, and no chance brought them face to face for an instant. And yet Julie, whether from excess of confidence or from heedlessness, lived much more in her garden than in her salon, and preferred a solitary stroll among the shrubbery to the conversation of her intimate friends. There were evenings when she denied herself to callers on the pretext of indisposition or weariness, but on those evenings she dressed none the less carefully, as if she expected some unusual visit; then she would go to the further end of the garden, hurry back in alarm at the faintest sound, then return to see what had frightened her, and fall into a sort of panic-stricken revery when she found that everything was quiet and that she was really alone.

One day she received a declaration of love, in well-turned language, without a signature and without a private seal. She was deeply offended at it, thinking that Julien had broken all his promises to her, and saying to herself that it deserved no other treatment than cold disdain. On the following day she discovered that this effusion came from the brother of one of her friends, and her first impulse was one of joy. No, of course Julien would not have written in such terms; Julien would not have written at all! The letter, which, in the confusion of uncertainty, had seemed to her not lacking in delicacy, now seemed to be in the worst possible taste; she tossed it scornfully into the fire. But what if Julien had written! Doubtless he knew how to write as well as talk. And why did he not write?

Julie had no sooner given way to this inward weakness than she was bitterly ashamed of it.

"Of what use are my strength and my common sense," she said, "when my heart rushes outside of me thus, to grasp an affection which eludes me? Upon my word, it is only the indifference with which I am regarded which preserves me, and yet the shame of that thought does not cure me. Am I guided by a spirit of contradiction? It seemed to me at first that any advance on that young man's part would have disgusted me and that I should have repelled him proudly; and lo and behold! his resignation irritates me, his silence distresses me, and I am angry with him for thinking no more of me! Evidently my mind is badly diseased."

One day when she was at her perfumer's, she met Julien going out. He had no right to bow to her in public, and he pretended not to see her. She found on the counter a very pretty fan which he had painted for his mother, and had just brought to the shop to be made up. She imagined that it was intended for her, and made up her mind to refuse it; however, she awaited the little gift with intense impatience.

"He will send it to me mysteriously," she thought; "it will be an anonymous offering, and in that case——"

But the gift did not arrive; so it was not for her after all. What folly to think that he intended it for her! Julien was in love with some other woman—some petty bourgeoise or some society woman of easy morals—perhaps an actress! She did not sleep for two nights; then she happened to see the fan in Madame Thierry's hand, and she breathed again.

In spite of her determination, she could not avoid speaking of Julien to his mother, and she resorted to every sort of detour to bring him into the conversation. She wished to know about the sort of life led by a young painter, of which she had no idea; and, although she dreaded to learn some unpleasant or painful details, she continued to ask questions, at first concerning the tastes and habits of artists, in general; then of a sudden she asked:

"Your son, for example; did he not lead a brilliant, dissipated, or at least an enjoyable life before the death of his father and your subsequent troubles?"

"My son has always been of a serious turn of mind," replied Madame André, "and I must say that the young men of all ranks seem to me very different to-day from those whom I used to see in my youth. My dear husband was a type of those men with fertile, ingenious and easily impressed imaginations, whose lives were filled with unexpected pleasures, and whose aim seemed to be the enjoyment of everything that was agreeable, rather than the ambitious pursuit of renown. He painted chefs-d'œuvre for amusement, and no anxieties ever disturbed his mind. To-day the modern artists are tearing themselves to pieces to do better than their predecessors. Criticism has been invented. Monsieur Diderot, whom my husband used to see very often, taught him to have a higher opinion of himself than he would have thought of doing, and my little Julien would listen to that great intellect, devouring him with his searching, inquisitive great eyes. Then Monsieur Diderot would say: 'There's a child who has the sacred fire!' But my husband didn't want to have too many ideas put into his head. He thought that the beautiful should be keenly felt and not studied overmuch. Was he right? He sought to embellish the imagination, not to overburden it. Julien was gentle and placid; he read and mused a great deal. His painting is more highly esteemed than his father's by genuine connoisseurs, and when he is talking of art you can see that he understands everything; but his work isn't so universally liked, and he doesn't care at all for society. His mind is full of all kinds of subjects of meditation, and when I say to him: 'You don't laugh, you are not in good spirits, you haven't the enthusiasm of your years,' he answers: 'I am happy as I am. I never feel the need of excitement. There are so many things to think about!'"

These outpourings of Madame Thierry's heart gradually revealed Julien to Madame d'Estrelle, and the sort of instinctive respect which had taken her by surprise when she first saw him, became a sort of awe which made her love him all the more. It was no longer possible for her to look upon him as an inferior, and yet the young artist was one of the class whom her associates referred to as those people! She made an effort sometimes, when she was talking with her friends, to plead for the strong and the intelligent in whatever class they might be found. Her friends were sufficiently far advanced to reply to her: "You are a thousand times right, birth is nothing, merit alone is of consequence;" but those were simply maxims for the benefit of enlightened persons, and nothing more. The actual practice of equality had in no wise been incorporated in the national morals, and the same persons were not at all backward, a moment later, in blaming the Duke of So-and-So for fertilizing his estates with a plebeian dowry, or Princess Blank for falling in love with a wretched adventurer to the point of wanting to marry him, to the great scandal of virtuous folk. A young woman, unmarried or widowed, might fall in love with a man of noble birth, even though he were poor; but, if he had no birth, it was a disgraceful infatuation, an indecent attachment; she sacrificed her principles to her passions; marriage failed to justify her and she became an object of public contempt. Julie, who had lived in the esteem and regard of her friends, her only compensation for her unhappy youth, had ice-cold shivers when she heard that sort of talk; and if the object of her secret passion had chanced at such a moment to enter her little circle, apparently so tolerant and good-humored, she would have been compelled to rise and say to him: "Why have you come here, monsieur?"

But the little party separated at nine, and ten minutes later Julie was in the garden; she gazed at the light in the pavilion, twinkling like a green star through the foliage, and she fancied that, if Julien should appear at a bend in the path, she should not be able to fly.

Throughout all this period of agitation on poor Julie's part, Julien was almost calm; his purpose was so upright, so sincere, that his mind had recovered its health sufficiently to deceive itself.

"No," he thought, "I did not lie to my mother. What Madame d'Estrelle inspires in me is a very strong, lofty, exquisitely delicate friendship; but it is not, as I thought at first, a frantic and disastrous passion; or, if I had an attack of that fever at the beginning, it disappeared on the day when I saw that simple, kindly, trustful woman close at hand, when I heard her sweet, chaste voice, when I realized that she was an angel and that my aspirations were not worthy of her. No, no, I am not in love, according to the common understanding of the term; I love with a full heart, that is all, and I will not allow my imagination to torment me. The earth has hardly closed over my poor father; I have not an hour to waste if I wish to save my mother. No, no, I have no right, I have no time to give way to passion."

Marcel noticed Julien's tranquillity and was unable to understand the mental perturbation which made itself manifest in Madame d'Estrelle's behavior. He found her one day just returned from a visit to her father-in-law the marquis. His life was thought to be no longer in danger, and Marcel might hope to talk with him again before long concerning his client's pecuniary embarrassments.

"Oh! mon Dieu, you put yourself to very great trouble for me," said Julie; "but is it worth while? I give you my word that I am quite willing to be poor; I should probably be no more bored than I am now."

"And yet you are beautifully arrayed and intending to pass the evening in company."

"No, I am going to change my dress; I don't expect to go out. With whom should I go out, pray? I am at odds with Madame d'Ancourt, the only person to whose house I might venture to go alone in the evening, as she was my schoolmate at the convent. I am not intimate enough with any of the others to appear at their houses without a chaperone; Madame Desmorges, who might act in that capacity for me, is indolent beyond words; my cousin the présidente is not received in aristocratic society, and the Marquise d'Orbe is in the country. Really I am terribly bored, Monsieur Thierry, I am too much alone, and there are days when I can do nothing, having no heart for anything."

It was the first time that Julie had complained of her situation. Marcel looked at her attentively and reflected.

"But I haven't a box anywhere now; you know very well that I can no longer afford it."

"An additional reason for going wherever you please. A box by the year is downright slavery; it puts you on exhibition and makes a chaperone a necessity. There are some small pleasures which the bourgeois indulge in at small expense and without inconvenient display. To-day, for instance, I am to take my wife to the Comédie-Française. We have hired a closed box on the ground floor."

"Ah! what a pleasure it must be to go there! You are not seen at all, are you? You enjoy the play, you can laugh or cry without being hooted by the gallery. Have you a place for me, Monsieur Thierry?"

"That makes no difference; he can go some other day; but what will people think to meet you on your solicitor's arm in the foyer? Or if some one should recognize you sitting beside Madame Marcel Thierry, what would they say?"

"They may say what they please, and they will be very absurd if they find anything reprehensible in it."

"That is my opinion; but people are absurd, and they will say that you keep beggarly company; I soften the word out of respect for my wife, for they will say low company."

"The folly of society is shameful! Your wife is very attractive, I am told, and highly esteemed. I will go to see her to-morrow, for I know that to go to occupy a seat in her box unceremoniously, before asking her permission, would not be proper. Yes, yes, I will call to make her acquaintance, and we will go to the theatre together another day."

Marcel smiled, for he thoroughly understood the cowardice which had taken possession of his noble client at the idea of being accused of mixing with low company. She considered it cruel, unfair, insulting, absurd; but she was afraid none the less: fear does not reason.

"Very well, very well," Marcel replied; "I recognize your delicacy of feeling and your kind heart. My wife will be grateful to you for the intention, and she will be flattered to offer you her box this very evening; but take my advice, madame la comtesse, and do not go outside of your own circle to-night, nor to-morrow, nor ever, unless for some well-matured and well-digested reason. We must eat when we are hungry, but not force ourselves when we have only a suspicion of an appetite. The society to which you belong wants no mixture, and you must not defy it except for some great personal advantage or to do some very good deed. No one will understand that you do something outside of the conventional solely for the pleasure of doing it. They will be surprised first of all, and then they will look for motives, concealed or serious."

"Nothing," replied Marcel; "but they will invent, and what people invent is always malicious."

"You have accepted it courageously thus far, and you know well that it will cease when you choose."

"Yes, by marriage; but where am I to find a husband to fill the conditions demanded by the world and by me? Consider: he must be wealthy, so you yourself say, noble, according to my friends, and I myself insist that he must be agreeable and a man made to be loved! I shall not find him, you know, and I shall do better——"

Julie dared not finish her thought. Marcel thought that he ought not to question her. There was a pause, embarrassing to them both, then Julie exclaimed abruptly:

"Ah! mon Dieu, do not think that I am tempted to be false to my duty and to enter into a frivolous liaison!—I was thinking—I must tell you—I was thinking that I should do better to desire an obscure marriage in which I might find happiness."

"Obscure?" said Marcel. "That depends on what you mean by the word. You must insist upon wealth in any event; for, I warn you that if you hold your rank cheap, the Estrelle family will abandon you to your destruction."

"What then? Why, if the husband of your choice is poor and you bring him debts——"

"Ah! yes, you are right; I increase his poverty with all my wretchedness and all the dangers that are hanging over me. I did not think of that. You see what a weak head mine is! Look you, Monsieur Thierry, there are days when I would like to be dead, and you do wrong not to take me to the play. I feel very depressed this evening, and I would like to be able to forget that I exist."

"Is it as bad as that?" rejoined Marcel hastily, terrified by her distressed expression. "In that case put on a very thick black veil and a very full black cape; I have a cab below; we will call for my wife, to whom I will explain your whim in two words, and we will go to hear Polyeucte, which will change the current of your thoughts. Hurry! for if anyone comes you won't be able to go out."

Julie jumped for joy like a child. She quickly transformed herself into a nun, dismissed her servants for the evening, and went with Marcel, half pleased, half frightened, and as excited as if this escapade with a solicitor and his wife were an adventure big with fate.

"Madame Thierry—we will leave her where she is," said Marcel. "Nothing has been said to her about going, and she would delay us while dressing. Besides, I should prefer—if you are to be recognized in spite of all our precautions—that you should not be seen with a woman who has a grown-up son—of whom, I may say parenthetically, Uncle Antoine has been exceedingly jealous. Mine is only a little law-student in embryo, barely twelve years old; we will take him, and that will make our bourgeois and—patriarchal party complete."

They arrived at Marcel's house. He ran upstairs, leaving Julie alone in the tightly closed cab. He soon came down again with his wife and son. Madame Marcel Thierry was very much frightened; but, like a sensible woman, she made no apologies and in a very few moments felt entirely at ease with the amiable Julie, who, on her side, found her a pleasant and sensible companion. They left the cab just before they reached the line of people waiting to purchase tickets, walked to the theatre, and passed in without meeting any spying or inquisitive persons. They were ushered into a very dark box, where Madame Marcel and her little boy took their places in front to conceal Madame d'Estrelle and the solicitor. They enjoyed the tragedy extremely. Julie had never taken so much pleasure in a performance. She had a feeling of greater mental freedom, and that middle-class family interested her deeply. She watched them curiously as types entirely unfamiliar to her, and, although they were a little self-conscious in her presence, she surprised divers little loving tokens between the husband and wife and child, which went to her heart. At the interesting passages in the play, Madame Marcel would turn to her husband and say in an undertone:

And the child applauded when he saw the pit applaud. He would clap his little hands with an air of importance, then suddenly throw himself on his mother and kiss her, which meant that he was enjoying himself immensely and that he thanked her for bringing him there.

All those simple ways of middle-class life, the familiar form of address, the endearing epithets, vulgar if you please, but sacred, aroused in Julie sometimes an inclination to laugh, sometimes a wave of emotion which brought tears to her eyes. Of course it would all be considered execrable form in her circle; it was the way that inferior people talked and acted. Marcel, when in Madame Estrelle's salon, readily adopted the manners and language of a man who is able to conform to what is considered proper in all ranks of society. In his own family he laid aside that conventional manner, and, without ever being vulgar, he resumed the familiar tone of happy domesticity. Thus Julie surprised him oblivious of his ceremonious manner and living for his own enjoyment a sweet, trustful, unconstrained life. She was distressed and delighted at the same time, and little by little she reached the point where she said to herself that those people were in the right, and that all husbands and wives ought to call each other thou, all children to throw their arms about their mothers' necks, and all spectators to be interested in the performance. In the circle in which she lived people always addressed one another as you, they had no simple phrases that came from the heart, they emasculated every noble sentiment. Refinement was the most essential point in speech, and dignity in endearments. The heart entered into them only in a subordinate capacity, and its effusions must be concealed beneath a certain frigid or absurdly symbolical gloss. Admiration for genius must never become enthusiasm. They enjoyed, or appreciated, their words were carefully confined within certain bounds. In short they made it a point not to display emotion on any subject, and with the perpetual little smile of the grace that accompanies noble birth, they became so charming that they ceased to be human.

Madame d'Estrelle realized all these things for the first time, and was deeply impressed by them. Little Juliot, who was so called to distinguish him from Master Julien, whose godson he was, had an interesting face. He was a funny little rascal, with a shrewd face, turned-up nose, keen eye and sly mouth, and had the artless and cunning self-possession of a schoolboy in vacation. Had he been disguised as a great nobleman, he would never have been confounded with the too pretty and too polished little men who are all covered with the same aristocratic varnish. Juliot had his coating of caste, to be sure, but of that peculiar shading which the bourgeoise mind does not seek to efface, because in that social stratum every one has to exist by his own exertions, and to make a place for himself with the aid of the means which are at his command. Thus the child had the biting wit, combined with a certain innocent curiosity, which denoted the freshly ground Parisian, inquisitive and loquacious, credulous and shrewd all at once. In order not to expose Madame d'Estrelle's name to the possible consequences of his chatter in the office, he had been told that she was a client from the country newly arrived in Paris, who had never been to the theatre before; and, as Julie enjoyed questioning him, he did the honors of the capital city and the stage, between the acts. He pointed out the king's box to her, and the pit and the chandelier; he even explained the play and the relative importance of all the characters.

"You are going to see a beautiful play," he informed her before the curtain rose. "Perhaps you won't understand it very well, because it's in poetry. I have read it with my godfather Julien, and he explained it all to me just as if it was in prose. When you don't understand, mademoiselle, you must ask me."

"You chatter like a magpie," said his mother. "Don't you suppose madame knows Corneille better than you do?"

"Much madame cares about your godfather's knowledge! You fancy that the whole world knows him!"

"Oh well! if you don't know him," said Juliot to Madame d'Estrelle, "I'll show him to you. He isn't far away, you know!"

"Yes, I've seen him quite awhile. He likes Polyeucte so much! He has seen it more than ten times, I am sure! See, look in the pit, the third row. His back is turned to us; but I recognize him, pardi! He has on his black coat and his chapeau à gances."

Madame d'Estrelle's heart beat very fast. She looked at the bench which the child indicated, and recognized no one there. Marcel scrutinized it closely. Juliot had made a mistake. The person he had taken for Julien turned his face toward them. It was not he; he was not there. As a matter of fact, he was in one of the upper galleries, just over the box in which Julie was hiding, and he was a hundred leagues from suspecting that by going down to the ground floor, he might at least have made an attempt to see her. Indeed, if he had known it, he would have kept his place. He was fully determined not to seek any more furtive opportunities to meet her. As an artist he was entitled to admission at the Français. He listened to Polyeucte meditatively, as a pious person listens to the sermon, and he went out before the end, fearing that his mother would sit up for him. As he passed through the vestibule, he was very much astonished to find himself face to face with Uncle Antoine. It was Uncle Antoine's invariable rule to go to bed at eight o'clock, and it was probable that he had never set foot in a theatre. Julien accosted him frankly; that was the better way, even though he were to be ill received.

"You are very good! Did you think I had gone to the Indies, pray, that you are so surprised to see me?"

And without explaining that reply, which to Julien was absolutely enigmatical, he turned his back on him.

And he passed on, but not without turning two or three times to see if the amateur in gardens went in or out, and if it were not the case that he had come there unconsciously; but every time that he looked he saw Monsieur Antoine standing motionless at the foot of the staircase, and looking after him with a mocking expression, in which however there was no sign of mental derangement.

Uncle Antoine disappeared in the crowd, which invaded the peristyle a few moments later. One of the first groups that he saw consisted of the solicitor's family, with a stranger taller than Madame Marcel, and completely concealed by her black silk headgear. He stole down to the street and took the number of the cab which that group entered, then despatched in pursuit of that cab the same shrewd and nimble-footed spy who had notified him that Madame d'Estrelle had gone out with her attorney, and who had been keeping watch outside the D'Estrelle mansion, and inside it at times, for a month past, under disguises of all sorts and on all sorts of pretexts.

In those days the play came to an end early enough to allow people to sup. Julie had returned home by ten o'clock, after dropping Madame Marcel on Rue des Petits-Augustins. Marcel, who had escorted Julie to her door, was about to go away without entering, when she called him back. Her concierge had just told her some very serious news. The old marquis, her father-in-law, had died at eight o'clock that evening, just when they believed that he was cured. Julie had been sent for, so that she might be present at the administration of the sacrament. Her absence, which was very hard to explain by reason of the situation which she herself had explained to Marcel, might have disastrous consequences.

"Ah! you see how it is!" said Marcel, sorrowfully, in a low tone (they were on the stoop); "I told you how it would be. I foresaw some trouble; but there is no time to be wasted in lamentation. The most disturbing thing of all is the old man's too sudden end. Come, madame, you must show yourself at that death-bed. You must take a cab once more. I will escort you to your mother-in-law's house. I shall not appear there, for it would not be proper for you to be seen to arrive under the escort of your solicitor. To-morrow I will take the field in your interest, and we will find out the contents of the will, if there is a will, which God grant!"

"Stay," said Marcel, "I can't wait for you at the dowager's door; her servants would see me, and I have an idea that they report everything to her. I will alight before you drive into the courtyard, and as I should not enjoy the idea of your returning alone in this vehicle, you must order your people to harness at once and send your carriage to the house."

"You think of everything for me," said Julie; "I don't know what would become of me without you."

"Think of this also," said Marcel. "You will not find the widow in tears, but at prayer. Do not allow that appearance of sanctity to encourage you as to her frame of mind. Be sure that she has noticed your absence and that she will arrange to make you undergo an examination in the very midst of her devotions. Do not forget that she hates you, and that, in order to justify herself in robbing you all that she possibly can, she will think of nothing but finding you at fault."

Julie tried to think how she could best explain the innocent escapade of the evening.

"You can find nothing better than the truth," replied Marcel. "Say that you have been at my house——"

"At your house, very good; but what about the play? Going to the play is a horrible sin in my step-mother's eyes, with or without you."

"Then—say that my wife was sick, that you are interested in my wife—because—because she has done you a service at some time—because she is charitable, and assists you in charitable work! Throw a slight varnish of piety over it; then what can she say to you?"

They reached their destination. Marcel ordered the cabman to stop; then he alighted, and Julie entered the courtyard of the hôtel D'Ormonde, on Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Germain, in a cab! That mansion belonged to the dowager D'Ormonde, who had married for her second husband the Marquis d'Estrelle, who had thereafter occupied her first husband's house with her.

The dowager was very rich; her establishment had a grand air of ceremonious inhospitality: few servants, small outlay, a frigid, deathlike splendor. The house consisted of several wings, and the mistress's apartments were located on a rear courtyard planted with trees and secured from intrusion by a wicket at which Julie had to ring and wait; but, being certain that she would be admitted, and knowing that Marcel would have to return on foot unless she sent the cab after him at once, she dismissed the cabman when she saw that the wicket was about to be opened.

Instead of opening it, the porter entered into a strange parley with her. Monsieur le marquis could not receive visitors because he was dead. The priests had come to administer the sacrament and to keep watch through the night; madame la marquise was closeted with them and the dead man. She gave audience to nobody at such times. Julie insisted to no purpose, on the ground that she was a very near relation. The porter, leaving her outside, purposely or through inadvertence, went to make inquiries, and returned to say that no member of the household was allowed access to madame.

As these negotiations had lasted a considerable time the Comtesse d'Estrelle understood perfectly well that some one had gained access to the marchioness, and that she refused to see her. Her duty was done, so she insisted no longer. She judged that her carriage, travelling much more rapidly than the cab, must have arrived: so she retraced her steps, crossed the outer courtyard and passed through the street gate, which was kept by the porter's wife and was closed behind her instantly, with indecent precipitation. A carriage was there; but Julie, notwithstanding her defective sight, saw at once that it was only a cab.

Thinking that it was the one that had brought her, and that the driver had misunderstood her orders, or that Marcel had sent it back for her by way of precaution, she called the driver, who was sound asleep on his box. It was impossible to wake him except by pulling the skirt of his coat. They who remember what cab-drivers were forty years ago, can judge what they were forty years earlier than that. This one was so dirty that Julie hesitated to touch him with her gloved hand. She carefully gathered up her ample silk skirt to avoid brushing the dirty wheels. Never before had she been in such an embarrassing plight; she was afraid, too, to be alone in the street near midnight. The occasional passers-by stopped to stare at her, and she trembled lest, from good nature or malice, they should attempt to interfere in her affairs.

The driver woke at last and answered that he did not know her, that he had brought two priests of the parish to attend the dying man, and that his orders were to wait for them. He would not stir at any price. Julie glanced anxiously about her. Her carriage did not appear. She raised the heavy knocker on the gate, intending to return to the courtyard of the hôtel. The gate did not open, whether because special orders had been given with respect to her, or because the general orders were inflexible.

Extreme terror took possession of her; the idea of returning alone, on foot, could not be entertained; nor was it possible to remain standing in front of that gate. There was not a single shop on the street, and she must wait for her carriage somewhere, no matter where, provided it was not in the street. The outbuildings of the hôtel D'Ormonde were some distance away, at the right and left. In one direction was an abbey, in the other the Convent of the Visitation, where she might seek shelter; but it was at least ten minutes' walk, and there again she would have to parley before obtaining admission. She noticed on the opposite side of the street a high gate at the end of a passage between the hôtel De Puisieux and the hôtel D'Estrées. She thought that if she gave a louis to the gate-keeper, he would allow her to wait in his lodge. She crossed the street, but, when she attempted to ring, she found that there was neither keeper nor bell. It was simply a servants' gate for both houses. Julie was rapidly losing heart, when she suddenly saw close beside her, as if he had risen from the ground, a man who terrified her so that she almost fainted; but he instantly named himself, and she uttered a joyful exclamation: it was Julien. She explained her misadventure in a few somewhat incoherent words. Julien understood because he was already half informed, and he was not there by chance.

"It is useless for you to wait here for your carriage," he said; "it probably will not arrive for some time."

"In that case I can understand my meeting with Monsieur Antoine Thierry and his words. He must have known that you were to be there. He was on the watch; he made an ironical remark which I did not understand, but which gave me something to think about. As I returned to the pavilion, I stopped, being somewhat uneasy, in front of your hôtel. Your servants were in great commotion. It seems that your coachman could not be found. I accosted the concierge, who knows my face, and, seeing that he was greatly disturbed, I asked him if any accident had happened to you. He told me of the Marquis d'Estrelle's death, and that you had driven here with my cousin Marcel. Your coachman appeared at last, dead drunk and unable to understand any of the orders you had left for him. The concierge left me, saying that when Bastien was once on his box, he would go all right. That did not seem very reassuring to me. I am not so phlegmatic as your concierge, and I came here as fast as I could. I hoped to find Marcel still here and to tell him not to trust you unattended to the care of a drunken coachman; but I arrived a few moments too late. You are alone and you have been frightened."

"It is all over," said Julie, "and I am calm again; take me home on foot. You are my Providence!"

"On foot, it is too far," replied Julien, "and you are not properly shod for walking. This cab here will take us, willingly or by force, I give you my word, and I will get up behind and accompany you."

Julien returned with Madame d'Estrelle to the cab. He put her in and ordered the driver to start. The driver refused. Julien jumped up beside him and seized the reins, swearing that he would throw him into the gutter if he resisted. The young man's manly bearing and determined air awed the cab-driver, who submitted; but he had not driven a hundred yards when he stopped, yelling thief and murder. A party of men had just come out of a house, and the poor devil hoped to find some aid against the violence he was undergoing.

As luck would have it these men were young dandies fresh from a sumptuous supper, and a little the worse for wine. The adventure presented itself at that moment of excitement when one gladly constitutes himself a redresser of wrongs, especially when the odds are four to one in his favor. They abruptly stopped the horses, and one of them opened the door, for the cabman was yelling at the top of his voice:

JULIEN ESCORTS MADAME D'ESTRELLE

Julien defended himself with his cane, and used it with such self-possession, skill and strength, that one of the assailants fell and the others retreated.

Before the door was open Julien was on his feet and vigorously repelled the most zealous of the intruders. The young man thus roughly treated drew his sword, calling him a clown, and his companions followed his example. Julien did not take the time to draw his. He defended himself with his cane, and used it with such self-possession, skill and strength, that one of the assailants fell and the others retreated. Julien, who had not left the step, took advantage of this respite to enter the cab and take Julie out by the opposite door. He took her in his arms and carried her some distance. Then he turned to await his adversaries; but, whether because some one of them had received a serious wound, or because the approach of the watch sobered them, they made off as rapidly as possible in the opposite direction.

Julie walked rapidly and well. If fear had paralyzed her for an instant, the sight of the danger to which her protector was exposed had restored her energy. After taking a somewhat roundabout course to throw the watch off the scent, they arrived safely on the Nouveau Cours, now Boulevard des Invalides. It was completely deserted and dimly lighted by lanterns. Julie did not notice a stain on her glove, but she felt the moisture of blood on her wrist, and stopped abruptly, exclaiming:

Julien felt nothing, he was very sure that nothing serious had happened to him; he wrapped his bruised hand in his handkerchief and offered Julie his other arm.

"I swear to you that I am not wounded," he said; "and suppose I were! Unfortunately those fellows were not very formidable, and I deserve little credit for ridding you of them. Coxcombs, dandies! And they bear titles of nobility in all likelihood!"

"I, detest them? No! but I abhor impertinence, and as such fellows are not always willing to fight a duel with plebeians, I am very glad to have beaten them as a bargeman might have done."

"Alas!" said Julie, thinking aloud, "nevertheless they are at liberty to insult and trample on the weak!"

"The weak! Who are the weak, pray?" rejoined Julien, mistaking the meaning of her words. "People without a name? Undeceive yourself, madame; they are the ones to whom the future belongs, because they have the right, true justice on their side, and, withal, the determination to put an end to the abuses of the past."

Julie did not understand, but she trembled anew; this time, however, she was not afraid of disagreeable encounters, but of an indefinable mysterious force which seemed to emanate from Julien. She glanced furtively at him; she fancied that she could see his face glow in the darkness, and that her feeble hand was resting on the arm of a giant.

But Julien was a simple-hearted youth, an artist without ambition in the practical affairs of life on his own account. He did not feel called upon to play a conspicuous part in the revolutionary tempests; he looked forward to no other labor for himself than that of studying the charms of nature all his life. That awe-inspiring power with which he was endowed in Julie's eyes was simply the reflection of the divine power on the mind of the new class. He was one of the hundred thousand among the millions of disappointed and soured men who were about to say on the first opportunity: "The cup is full, the past has had its day." The brief allusion he had just made to this general frame of mind among men of his class—a subject which was in every mouth at that time—seemed to Madame d'Estrelle a most impressive prophecy from the lips of an exceptional man. It was the first time that she had ever heard anyone speak defiantly and contemptuously of what she had always considered invincible. The species of superstitious terror which she felt was blended with fervent trust, with a longing to lean the more heavily on that sturdy arm which, under the impulsion of a noble heart, had fought alone, in her cause, against four swords.

"So you think," she said, still walking rapidly, "that one can shake off the yoke of this unjust world which oppresses men's consciences, and condemns true principles? I would like to agree with you that is likely to happen!"

"No one can say when or by what means; what is just and right cannot fail to happen; but what does it matter to you, madame, whether all this lasts fifty or a hundred years longer? Are you not one of those who profit innocently by the misfortunes of others?"

"Oh! I profit by nothing. I have nothing of my own, and I am nobody in society."

"But you are of society, you belong to it, it owes you protection, and it will never wound you in your own person."

Then, fearing that she had said too much, she changed the subject by recurring to the scene which had just taken place.

"When I think," she said, "that a great disaster might have happened to you just now! Ah! your poor mother—how she would have cursed me if I had been the cause—"

"No, madame, that could not have happened," replied Julien; "I had right on my side."

"Yes, since Providence is with us. It gives us strength and presence of mind. A man who defends a woman's honor against scoundrels has all the chances on his side. Courage comes very easy to him; he feels that he cannot succumb."

"What faith you have!" exclaimed Julie, deeply touched. "Yes, I remember you said at my house the other day that faith would move mountains, and that you were faith personified."

"The other day!" Julien repeated ingenuously. "That was more than a month ago."

Julie dared not pretend not to know how many days and nights had passed since that brief interview. So she said nothing. Julien carried his respect for her so far as not to continue the conversation himself, and the longer the silence endured the less able was Julie to summon the presence of mind to break it without betraying the emotion she felt. At last they reached the pavilion.

"Do you not think," he said, "that you should take your arm from mine now, so that your people may not see me? then I will follow you at a little distance until I have seen your door close behind you."

"Yes," she replied; "but what will my people think to see me returning alone and on foot at such an hour? The best way is for me to go through the pavilion and through my garden; then they will think that Monsieur Marcel brought me back that way."

"I will go and wake my mother," he said, "and tell her to get up; for I told her, as I passed, not to sit up for me. She thinks that I have been to take supper with Marcel."

"Don't wake her, I forbid it. To tell her all our adventures would take too long now. She would be distressed, perhaps, being half asleep. To-morrow you can tell her everything. Open the garden door for me, and I will run home without making any noise. Thanks, and adieu!"

To pass through the narrow passage way leading from the street door to the garden door, inside the pavilion, they had to walk several seconds in absolute darkness. In that straitened household no lamps were kept burning needlessly, and Babet came for the day only and did not sleep in the house. Julien went first, opened the garden, bowed low to Madame d'Estrelle and immediately closed the door, to prove to her that he never used it and that he should not presume to follow her, even with his eyes, along the paths through which she glided like a ghost.

Such perfect discretion, such unswerving respect, such delicate, thoughtful, untiring, really serviceable devotion touched Madame d'Estrelle profoundly. It was a magnificent June night. She knew that by knocking on the window of her bedroom, which was on the ground floor, looking on the garden, she could summon Camille, who was sitting up for her. She knew too that Camille's vigil consisted in enjoying a good nap on the best couch in the apartment. She thought that she might without unkindness allow her to keep vigil in that way a few moments more; and feeling that her heart was overflowing with emotion, her mind fairly drowned by conflicting thoughts, she could not resist the temptation to sit down beside the basin in which the moon was reflected, clear and motionless, as in a Venetian mirror.

The nightingale had ceased to sing. It was sleeping on its young brood. All was still, and the young zephyr (the night breeze of those days) was slumbering so sweetly that it did not even stir a blade of grass. Paris too was asleep, at all events the tranquil quarter of which the hôtel D'Estrelle marked the outer limit. The sounds of the country were more audible there than those of the city; at that hour they were confined to an occasional cock-crow and the barking of a dog in the distance at long intervals. The clocks rang out in clear tones, answering one another from convent to convent; then everything relapsed into blissful silence; and if one could hear the distant rumbling of a carriage on the pavement of the real Paris, it resembled the dull murmur of the waves rather than a sound produced by human activity.

Julie, tired out and slightly bewildered, breathed deep of the tranquillity of the night, of that perfume of solitude, with the keenest pleasure. She fixed her eyes on a great white star, which shone near the moon and was reflected in the same basin. At first she sat there without thinking, oblivious of everything, enjoying absolute repose; soon her heart began to beat so violently that it pained her; first she felt hot, then cold. She rose to go away. She went to her bedroom window, but she did not knock. She returned to the stone bench. She sat down and wept. Then she rose and walked around the basin like a soul in torment; at last she stopped, smiling like a soul at peace. She consented to question herself, and when her heart replied: I love, she was frightened and forbade it to speak. Then she called her conscience to account for that terror, that shrinking austerity, opposed to the laws of nature and useless to God. Her conscience replied that it had nothing to do with it, and that the obstacle was not due to it but to the reason, a sort of artificial conscience wherein God and nature gave precedence to conventional ideas, fear, selfish scheming, precautions due to misapprehension of one's real interests. In this order of reasoning everything was expressed in terms of six-franc pieces. Marcel had reason on his side in view of the actual facts. So the heart must be sacrificed to the most sordid of facts, to the implacable menace of poverty.

"No," said Julie to herself, "that shall not be! If necessary I will sell everything, I will have nothing of my own, I will work; but I will love, even though I have to ask alms! Besides, he will work for three, he who works now for two! He will undertake that burden, he will be overjoyed to do it if he loves me! In his place, I should be so overjoyed!"

"Does he love me as much as that? Does he love me with the passion that I thought that I detected the first day?—Ah! that is the question that I ask myself incessantly, that is all that troubles me, that is something that neither my conscience nor my reason, nor my heart can tell me. Perhaps he has only a friendly feeling for me, for he is a good son, and he is grateful to me for what I tried to do for his mother. He owes me gratitude and he proves his gratitude by admirable devotion. And what then? Why should he love me madly? why should he want to pass his life at my feet? He has no craving for it, for he is never at hand except on occasions when I may need him. The rest of the time he gives his mind to his real duties, his work, his mother, perhaps to some girl of his own station who will bring him a comfortable dowry—whereas I, a poor, ruined—But am I ruined?—If my husband's father has provided for my future, I am still a grande dame—and in that case—in that case everything in my dream is changed; I forget this young man who is not suited to me, I marry a man in society, at my choice, I am proud and happy, I love without perplexity and without shame.—Oh, yes! But now it is he, no stranger, no other than he, whom I love; it is he alone, and I do not know whether one can be cured of that. I do not know if one ever forgets. I fear not, since the more I try, the more utterly I fail; the more I defend myself, the more completely I am beaten. My God, my God! in all this there is but one real fear, one real torture: and that is the fear that he does not love me! How shall I find out? Perhaps I shall never find out. Can I live without it?"

Tormenting herself thus, she found herself quite near the pavilion, having no idea how she came there. The door was open, a black figure stood in the doorway. Julien, as if he had overheard her thoughts, as if he were irresistibly impelled to answer them, came straight to her side.

Julie at once recovered her reason and her pride. Taken by surprise, she was about to speak in the character of an insulted queen. He did not give her time.

"Why are you here, madame?" he said. "Can you not get in? Are your servants asleep, or are they all expecting you to come from the street? You cannot pass the night in the garden, dressed as you are. It is two o'clock. The dew is falling, you will be frozen, you will be ill. And your hood is over your shoulder, your head bare, your arms hardly covered. Here, take this heavy mantle of my mother's at once, and forgive me for being here."

"I heard you walking on the gravel—a very light step which could be nobody's but yours, and constantly stopping and going on again. I was in the studio, then I came here and held the door ajar, saying to myself: 'She is still out-of-doors, she can't get in, she will take cold, she is tired, she is suffering, perhaps she is afraid!' I could not stand it any longer; indeed, it was my duty. And this must not go on, you know; whatever people may say or think, I do not propose that you shall kill yourself; no, I do not!"

Julien was profoundly moved, his voice trembled, and so did his hands as he placed his mother's cloak over Julie's shoulders; but he did not struggle against the surprises of passion; he chided rather, like a father who sees his child in danger. It did not occur to him that he could be accused of selfish love or of a treacherous exploit. So that he forgot all considerations of propriety, and there was in his solicitude a passionate intonation which overpowered Julie. She grasped both his hands and, carried away herself by an outburst of exalted passion, the first in her life, the least expected and the most unconquerable, she exclaimed wildly:

"You love me, you love me, I am sure! Then tell me so, that I may hear it and know it! You love me—as I want to be loved!"

Julien stifled a cry, lost his head completely and carried Julie into his studio; but she had led so chaste a life that the alarm of her modesty inevitably caused her lover's respect, momentarily submerged, to rise again to the higher regions of his heart. He fell at her feet and covered the tips of her ice-cold fingers with kisses, imploring her to have perfect confidence in him.

"Confidence!" he exclaimed, "confidence! I have sworn that I would be your brother. It is your brother who is here beside you, do not doubt it, and your confidence will save me. I told you that I adored you; that is truer than I can possibly tell you, stronger than you can dream, more terrible than I myself imagined; but I will not cause you to shed a tear, I would kill myself first! Have no fear; you shall never need to blush for having ordered me to love you."

Could he have kept his word? He believed that he could, even at the height of his delirious joy. Julie increased his strength by her own boldness.

"No, I do not propose to blush," she said, with the frankness of a serious resolution; "I propose to be your wife, for to be your mistress would degrade you. Commonplace love affairs are not becoming to a man like you; to a woman like me, dissolute conduct is impossible. I too would kill myself first! Julien, let us take our oath here and now to marry, whatever happens, whether I am rich or destitute, for there is as much chance of one as of the other. If I am poor, your determination will never weaken, you will sustain and support me. If I am rich, you will have no vain pride, you will share my destiny. This must be decided, agreed upon, sworn to. I am not brave, I warn you; that is why I insist upon pledging myself irrevocably, and then I know that I shall look neither to the right hand nor to the left. My love will become a duty; then I shall be strong, resolute and self-possessed. I was able to endure despair in marriage, because I have principles and true piety; with all the more reason I shall accept happiness, and I will struggle to be happy as I struggled formerly not to desire to be. Swear, my friend; we must be everything to each other, or we must never meet again; for this is certain, we love each other and our love is stronger than we are. Society can have nothing to say. For a fortnight past I have ceased to live, I have felt that I was dying. To-day, I went mad; I should have run after you just now if you had said to me: 'I do not love you.'—Or no, I should have thrown myself into the basin, with the moon and the star that shine in its depths. Julien, I am losing my mind, I never said such things before, I did not think that I should ever dare to say them, but here am I saying them to you, and I am not sure that it is myself who speaks. Have pity on me, sustain me, preserve my honor, which is yours, preserve your wife's purity for your own sake."

"Yes, my wife! yes, I swear it!" cried Julien, in an ecstasy of joy. "And do you too, Julie, swear it before God!"

"Mon Dieu!" said Julie, bewildered and suddenly becoming a little cowardly, "we have known each other a month——"

"No, not a month," replied Julien. "Only an hour; for we met a month ago for a quarter of an hour here, a quarter of an hour at your house, and this evening in the street for half an hour. We may as well say, Julie, that, so far as appearances go, we do not know each other at all, and yet we love each other. God above hears us and knows it well, for it was He who wished it, who still wishes it!"

"Yes, you are right," she replied excitedly, for she felt recreated by her lover's exalted faith; "we know nothing of each other but our love. Is not that enough? is not that everything? What is all the rest? You are a clever artist, an estimable young man, a good son; that is what everybody knows about you; but is it because of those things that I love you? I am a virtuous person, not ungenerous and of a gentle disposition, or so you may have heard; but that is not what made you love me. There are other good men, other estimable women, to whom we should never have thought of becoming attached; we love each other because we love each other, that is the whole story!"

"Yes, yes," said Julien, "love is like God, it is because it is, it is the alkahest! What does it matter that we discover in each other this or that peculiar development of mind or character? The great, the only business of our lives is to love, and since we possess each other's love, we have known each other a hundred years, forever—our love has neither beginning nor end!"

They hyperbolized thus for more than an hour in the studio, talking in low tones, by the vague light of the moon shining through the trees; Julie seated, Julien on his knees, hand in hand, but refraining from the kiss which would have been their ruin. Suddenly the moon, which was sinking toward the horizon, seemed to shine so brightly, that they were forced to conclude that the dawn was lending its light. Julie rose and fled, after making Julien swear a hundred times that their union was indissoluble.

Camille was greatly surprised, when she opened the door for her mistress, to find that it was nearly three o'clock.

"Yes, madame; they think that madame has decided to pray all night by monsieur le marquis's body. The carriage went to fetch madame. Madame must have found it at the gate of the hôtel D'Ormonde?"

"No, I did not wait for it; it was too slow in coming. Monsieur Marcel Thierry brought me home by way of the pavilion, where I had to stop and talk business with him. Tell the servants to go to bed; the carriage will return when the coachman is sober."

"Ah! mon Dieu! so madame knows? Poor Bastien! I can take my oath, madame, that he got tipsy from vexation because madame had taken a cab."

If this explanation made Julie smile, her own explanations seemed strange to the soubrette; but she suspected nothing wrong. Julie's life was so regular and so pure! Camille concluded simply that her financial position must be in great danger, since she passed the night talking with the solicitor; and she imparted her solicitude to the other servants, who were distressed by it, even while thinking that they must not allow their wages to go unpaid. The footman, who was a friend of Camille, and as such inclined to shield Bastien, went to the hôtel D'Ormonde, but did not find him there. Bastien had understood that his orders were to go back to the wineshop, and thither he had gone; he was sleeping the sleep of the angels, the only slumber supposed to be delicious enough to be compared with that of a drunken man. The carriage was waiting for him at the door, and the groom, his subordinate, had consented to watch the horses on condition that he was supplied with something to warm him on the box every fifteen minutes. The rascals did not reappear at the hôtel until daylight and did not recover their senses for twenty-four hours. Under other circumstances Julie would have dismissed them; but she foresaw that the bacchanalian episode would introduce confusion into the accounts of the romantic episode, in the gossip of the servants' hall and the porter's lodge. That is what actually happened, and as the people in Madame d'Estrelle's service were not ill-disposed toward her, it seemed that nothing was likely to transpire of her actions during that extraordinary night.

On the next night, as a matter of prudence the lovers held aloof from each other; but on the night following that, although they had made no appointment, they found themselves once more among the shrubbery in the garden, and repeated with renewed delight all that they had said two days before. They continued in this way, undisturbed and without apparent danger, nothing being easier than for Madame d'Estrelle to steal out of her apartments, even without very great precaution, her people being accustomed to see her go out alone for a breath of fresh air, at a late hour on summer nights.

What a delightful existence if it could have lasted! Those meetings had all the charm of mystery, with no remorse to disturb their joys. Both perfectly free, and aspiring only to the most sacred union, sustained by a love strong enough to be able to wait, they sat there in the darkness, amid bushes laden with flowers, in the splendor of the early summer which retains all the charm of spring; they were like two fiancés, who are permitted to love each other, and who, without abusing the permission, keep out of sight in order to arouse no jealousy. It was the honeymoon of sentiment preceding the honeymoon of passion. Passion was already awake, but they fought against it, or rather held it in reserve, by mutual consent, for the time when they would be forced to fight and display their courage; for well they knew what they would have to face, and Julien said to his friend:

"You will suffer terribly for my sake, I know; and I shall suffer to see you suffer; but then we shall belong to each other, and love will afford us ineffable joys which will make us invulnerable to assaults from outside. Even if you were not guarded here by your own modesty and my veneration, it seems to me that my selfish interests, rightly understood, would enjoin upon me not to exhaust all my happiness at once."

At other times Julien was more agitated and less resigned to wait. Then Julie would pacify him by imploring him to remember what he had said the day before.

"I have been so happy since we have loved each other thus!" she would say to him. "Let us not change this blissful condition of affairs. Remember that on the day when I shall say to you aloud that I have chosen you for my life companion, people will laugh and cry out and accuse me of a vulgar infatuation; and I know virtuous women who will say to me cynically: 'Keep him for a lover, since you must have a lover; but see him in secret and don't marry him!' With what sort of a countenance could I endure such impertinences, if my conscience were not clear, and if I no longer felt that I had the right to reply: 'No, he is not my lover! he is my fiancé, whom I love, and who has proved his respect for me as no other man could ever have proved it!' Let us keep all our weapons, Julien; truth is the most powerful of all weapons in the struggle against false ideas."

Julien submitted, because he was entirely devoted to her, and also because his spirit was loyal to that indefinable strain of heroism which had guided his life and restrained the first impulses of his youth. He was still able to conquer his passions, having never allowed them to dominate him entirely. Moreover, this romance of pure love, in the perfume-laden darkness, appealed to his imagination, and to the artist those poetic nights were intoxicating festivals. That garden had dark recesses and imposing masses of foliage, such as we see in Watteau's pictures. The appearance of Julie, charmingly dressed, not over tall, and of graceful outline in her simple gown, was in harmony with that distinctive savor which makes of Watteau a serious painter, a realistic and thoroughly alive Italian, amid conventional surroundings and in an age of affectation. There was a secluded nook where a tall white marble urn, standing high upon an ivy-wreathed pedestal, stood forth vaguely in the darkness, like a spectre, against the black background of the trees. Bluish, indistinguishable lights flitted over the foliage, and the shadows of the branches played about the marble, whose outlines constantly disappeared, although its shape was always graceful and majestic.

Thither Julien repaired to wait for Julie, as soon as his mother had gone to bed, and, when she approached, as smiling and tranquil as happiness itself, with her silk petticoats shimmering in the darkness and her lovely bare arms holding up her skirts, Julien fancied that he was looking upon some modern muse who ruled his destiny, bringing him promises of future bliss with all the charms and fascinations of present real life.

They must enjoy the present without giving too much thought to the morrow, for the uncertainty of future events made it impossible for them to form definite plans. They did not know yet whether they could live on thus, deserted by society, forgotten and at peace in that garden which had become an earthly paradise for love; or whether, ejected from the pavilion by inexorable creditors, they would go to seek an attic chamber in some suburb, with a garden on the window-sill. They proposed to face everything together; that was the only absolute certainty, the only irrevocable determination.

Two weeks had passed since the Marquis d'Estrelle's death, and, after search had been made in every conceivable place, there was no trace of a will. It was generally believed that there was one; no one dared say aloud that the marchioness had persuaded him not to make one. There were divers indications that Marcel believed that to be a fact, but it was of no use to suspect, they could prove nothing, and the consequences were enforced with overbearing placidity; that is to say, the marchioness, while holding fast to the rights guaranteed by her marriage contract, also inherited all the property of the deceased, and made no suggestion of any sum being set aside to pay the late count's debts. And yet such a provision seemed to be implied by the terms of Julie's marriage contract. It was a matter for judicial settlement, and Marcel advised Julie to appeal to the courts, if for no other purpose than to delay the suits with which she was threatened. Julie would not consent. It was her idea that lawsuits were always lost by both parties, and Marcel agreed that she was not very far astray.

"I am well aware," she said, "that the marchioness does not love me, and it is very possible that she owes me nothing; but she is a very great lady, and it is not possible that, rich as she is, she will allow a person who bears her name to be entirely denuded. Let us wait a little longer. It would not be becoming to begin so soon to talk to her about money, and it would be most imprudent, as you yourself said, to appear to be in too much of a hurry. When the time has come, I will take that step, let it cost what it may; you must advise me of the fitting opportunity."

"Go there at once," said Marcel to her one day. "There is no time to lose, your creditors propose to take action to-morrow."

Julie, undeterred by the ill-success of her first visit, had called upon the dowager on the morning following the marquis's decease. On that occasion she was received very coldly, but courteously. Perhaps, the marquis's testamentary provisions having been put out of the way, her presence was no longer dreaded. There was a sort of bitter-sweet comment upon the worldly pleasures in which Madame d'Estrelle indulged at the close of her period of mourning, in allusion to her absence from home on the preceding evening. Julie had given the explanation agreed upon with Marcel. It was received with a decidedly incredulous air of curiosity, and then the marchioness observed:

"I am very sorry for you, countess, but you are obliged to wear mourning again!"

Julie had paid other visits to the dowager, without mentioning her pecuniary troubles. When the moment had come to do so, she summoned all her courage, began the interview with her usual gentleness of manner, and laid bare her position in a few words, which she could not succeed in making very humble.

"I beg your pardon, madame," the marchioness replied, "but I do not at all understand these matters of business, as I have not enjoyed the advantage of living on terms of intimacy with solicitors. If you will be good enough to send your solicitor to my notary, he will be informed of my rights as well as my duties, and will be convinced that you are not included among the burdens left for me to bear."

"That is not the reply which I expected from your sense of honor, madame la marquise. It may be that you owe me nothing; it must be so, since you so declare."

"You mean," replied Julie, excited by the sneer, "that Monsieur le Comte d'Estrelle made something of a misalliance when he married a young woman of a family whose nobility was partly of the sword and partly of the gown. That does not wound me, for I am not ashamed of those of my ancestors who were magistrates, and I do not consider myself inferior to anyone; but I did not come here to discuss my right to the honor of bearing the name which you also bear. It is a fact that I am the Comtesse d'Estrelle; am I to lose the status which was promised me, and which seemed to be secured to me? If monsieur le marquis forgot me when he was dying, does it not result from the intentions which he must have communicated to you, that you will pay his son's debts, in part, at least?"

"No, madame, that does not follow from any intention that he ever made known to me. I simply know his opinion, and it was this: that you must absolutely abandon your dower, since it is insufficient to pay the debts in question, and that he would then attend to the balance."

"That has often been proposed to me, madame, and I have asked whether, in exchange for that sacrifice, any allowance would be made me."

"Well, one can live with that, my dear; that is enough to enable one to ride in cabs, to see the play from a closed box, consort with solicitors' wives, and walk about the streets at midnight on a sign-painter's arm. Those are your tastes, I am told; gratify them, renounce your rights, or allow the property which you hold from the Estrelle family to be sold at any price; it makes little difference to me! All that I desire is that you should marry somebody or other, so that your name will be changed and I shall never be confounded with you by those who do not know us."

"You shall have that satisfaction, madame, for I am more anxious than you to avoid that unpleasant confusion."

Marcel was waiting at her house. When she returned with pale cheeks and eyes blazing with indignation, he said:

"My dear Thierry, I am hopelessly ruined," she replied; "but that is not what is suffocating me with rage. She insults me, she tramples me under her feet; at the very outset, without any presumption or provocation on my part, she hurls insults in my face! I am surrounded by spies, who carry tales to her and poison the most innocent things. Thierry," she added, sinking into a chair, "you are an honest man; I swear to you that I am an honest woman."

"Only a miserable villain could deny that!" cried Marcel. "Come, have courage, tell me what you mean."

When Marcel knew everything, excepting only the understanding between Julien and the countess, for they had thought it best to keep their secret temporarily, even from Madame André Thierry, he was much cast down and considered the situation very desperate.

"Here you are," he said, "between sudden, absolute destitution, a terrible thing to a woman with your habits, and a lawsuit of which the result is very doubtful. I no longer know what to advise you. I see that my anticipations are being realized. She can strip you bare and obtain the approval of society, by trying to besmirch your reputation. She has weapons all sharpened for you, she laid in a store of them when she saw that the marquis was sinking, and, feeling sure that he was on his death-bed, she used them; she has manœuvred in cold blood to ruin you, she has set spies upon you and had you followed."

"Julien thinks so; I still doubt it; I will find out, and, if necessary, I will set up a counter-system of espionage; but the most urgent thing is not to find out who is betraying you, but to determine what you will do."

"No; but let us not make that announcement; we will threaten to make trouble; I will attend to that. They insist that you shall abandon your dower; I propose that they shall purchase that sacrifice, and I will make a stout fight over the conditions."

"Meanwhile," said Julie, "I am at odds with my husband's family, for you can imagine that I shall never set foot inside the marchioness's doors again."

"In view of her very evident determination to drive you to extremities, I do not pretend to advise you to be patient. War is declared, the hostilities are not of our making. Our proper course is to avoid retreating."

But Marcel had no time to fight. He had at his heels two or three solicitors of decidedly unsavory renown, who talked of selling at auction, and who would grant no further delay. He thought that they must submit to the marchioness's demands. He went to Julie and told her so.

"They are robbing you," he said; "indeed I fear that they may force you, in case you resist, to part with the slender capital you inherit from your own family. It is absolutely certain that the count's debts, with the accumulated interest, will absorb much more than what you still retain of his fortune. The Marquise d'Estrelle desires to occupy, or at all events to own, the hôtel D'Estrelle."

"The pavilion too. My aunt must have something to indemnify her for moving; another point to fight over, but one in which you are not interested."

Julie made no reply, but became profoundly sad. The idea of being ruined, of being reduced to twelve hundred francs a year, had not hitherto presented itself very clearly to her mind: but to leave forever that lovely house and that delightful garden, which had become so dear to her in the past few weeks; to lose that proximity to the pavilion, the fascination and the perfect security of those nocturnal interviews—that was a genuine catastrophe! A whole world of bliss crumbled to dust behind her. One phase of the purest happiness she had ever known was brutally closed, before she had any time to prepare for it.

Marcel returned at once to the marchioness's notary. He found him very domineering in face of the countess's concessions—not as a man, for he was a most gallant individual, but as the agent engaged to contest his client's cause foot by foot. Moreover he had been warned against Julie, and he saw in her only a foolish young woman, determined to sacrifice everything to illicit passions. Marcel could not contain himself; he lost his temper, swore on his honor that there were no secret relations between the countess and his cousin, that they hardly knew each other, and that Julie was the purest of women and the most worthy of respect and compassion. Marcel had the reputation of an exceedingly upright man: the warmth of his convictions shook the notary; but, recurring to the marchioness's rights, he showed that she was mistress of the situation, and that the countess would be very fortunate to extricate herself in any way that the other chose to allow.

However, he promised to do his utmost to bring her to a more generous frame of mind toward her stepson's widow. The next day he announced, in a letter to Marcel, that the marchioness desired to inspect the hôtel D'Estrelle, which she had not entered for a long time. She desired to see for herself the condition of the property and then to have an appraisal made and discussed in her presence by her advisers and the countess's. It was easy to see, from the tone of this letter, that the notary had displeased his client by pleading the moral side of Julie's cause, as he had promised to do, and that he himself was far from pleased with the dowager's suspicions and harsh dealing.

He appeared with her on the same day. Julie, preferring not to see her heartless enemy again, locked herself into her boudoir, leaving the doors of all the other rooms open.

The Marquise d'Estrelle was a shrewish Norman. In Madame d'Ancourt's circle she was called Madame de Pimbeche, Orbeche, etc. She was accused of borrowing money by the year to lend secretly at usurious rates. This may have been an exaggeration; but it is certain that, if she expended a considerable sum to set Julie free, she proposed to recoup herself on the details. The promptness with which she came to make this sort of expert inspection demonstrated that purpose.

She went through the house, examined everything with a keen, unerring eye, made her comments and her deductions on account of the slightest crumbling of the walls, cried down the furniture and the fixtures as much as she possibly could, and talked and acted with a cynicism born of avarice and aversion, which fairly sickened Marcel and made the notary blush more than once. When she came to the boudoir where Julie had taken refuge, she demanded that the door be opened. It was opened instantly. Julie had heard her approaching, and being unwilling to undergo the supreme affront of receiving a hateful visitor against her will, she had gone out through the garden, bidding Camille open the door as soon as the demand was made. Camille was proud, she could point to sheriffs among her ancestors! She could not resist the temptation to give the dowager a lesson: she walked to a chest of drawers in which she had hastily and designedly placed a few trifles, and said in a tone of sarcastic resignation:

"Perhaps madame desires to count the linen? There are some of my mistress's ribbons and neckerchiefs here."

The dowager cared little for the chatter of a lady's maid; but her hatred of Julie was lashed into fury. She cast a rapid glance through the window and saw Madame d'Estrelle crossing the garden toward the pavilion.

Doubtless that was a great mistake on Julie's part; but she too was exasperated. She felt as if she were driven from her house, from her bedroom, from her most sacred retreat, by the shamelessness of persecution. She longed for a refuge, her brain was in a whirl, and she bent her steps, without reflection, as if by instinct, toward Madame Thierry and Julien.

"She will not come to their house to rout me out," she thought; "she will not dare. I am still the owner of the place, and I alone have the right to enter the premises of my lessees. Moreover, it is time for me to acknowledge my friendly relations with Madame Thierry, and after to-day I propose to go to her house as I go to the houses of other women who have sons or brothers."

As she resolutely entered the pavilion, the marchioness, impelled by a no less sudden resolution, rushed from the boudoir into the garden.

"Where are you going, madame?" asked Marcel, who had not seen Julie fleeing, but who distrusted the gleaming eyes and the jerky gait of the vigorous and active old woman.

The marchioness did not deign to answer, but hopped on like a plucked magpie. Marcel and the notary followed her, being unable to stop her.

She knew the place very well, although she had not shown herself there for a long while, having had a falling-out with her step-son the count at the time of her second marriage. She arrived at the pavilion a few minutes after Julie, and entered the studio like a bombshell.

Julien was alone; he was not even aware that Madame d'Estrelle had come in and gone up to his mother's room. Since he had been seeing Julie in secret, he had ceased to be on the lookout for her. They were so entirely agreed that they would not meet by chance! He was working and singing over his work. Julie, as she passed through the little porch, had had an indefinable sudden presentiment of the danger of being followed; so she had gone upstairs, convinced that the widow's bedroom was an inviolable refuge.

Surprised by the sudden appearance of the old dowager, Julien, who had never seen her, rose from his chair, thinking that she had come from the street and that she wished to give him an order. That red-faced, panting apparition, angular and repellent, caused him more displeasure than hope.

"Here is a person who will haggle like a pawnbroker," he thought rapidly, "unless indeed she is a female pawnbroker herself."

Marcel and the notary appeared, and Julien's wondering eyes questioned the former, who made haste to reply:

"I don't need to be introduced to this gentleman," retorted the marchioness, sharply, "and I am quite able to explain myself."

"I asked you a question," continued the marchioness in nowise disconcerted; "I will make it more distinct. Where did the Comtesse d'Estrelle go?"

Julien started back; Marcel, seeking to avoid an absurd scene, hastily motioned to him and touched his forehead with his finger, to indicate that the woman's mind was deranged.

"Ah! very good," said Julien, speaking in the tone which one adopts with children and madmen. "Madame la Comtesse d'Estrelle? I don't know her."

"A silly answer, master painter, and altogether useless. I desire to speak to that lady, and I know that she lives here—from time to time!"

"Marcel," said Julien, turning to his cousin, "was it you who brought this lady to me?"

"No, monsieur," the notary replied with decision; "I followed madame, and I have absolutely no idea why she came here."

"Then you would have done better not to have followed me," replied the marchioness with calm asperity; "I had a reason for coming to this picture-shop, you have none. Do me the favor to allow me to conduct myself here as I please."

"I wash my hands of the affair," replied the notary, saluting Julien with much courtesy; and he took his leave, cursing the shrewish and capricious humor of his client.

"As for me, madame," retorted Marcel, "this house is occupied by members of my own family, and I receive orders from no one except the mistress of the house, who is my aunt."

"I know all that. I know your relationship and the understanding between you as between good friends, and your neighborly relations with the Comte d'Estrelle's widow. Remain if you choose, or turn me out if you dare."

"Let us have done with this, madame," said Julien, losing patience. "I am not in the habit of failing in respect to a woman, however extraordinary her conduct may appear to me; but I am an artist, a mechanic if you choose; I am on my own premises, in my picture-shop, as you well describe it; I am working, I have no time to waste. You talk to me of subjects which I do not understand and of a person whom I have not the honor to receive; if you have no other motive for interrupting me, permit me to leave you."

With that he picked up his palette and his sketch and left the studio, with an expressive glance at Marcel, which seemed to say: "Get me out of this as best you can."

"Very good!" said the marchioness, not at all crushed by this dismissal in due form. "I will remember the shepherd's ballad. Let us look about this hovel a bit. I will spare you nothing; I want to see the whole pavilion, inside, upstairs and down, as I saw the hôtel."

"Come, madame," said Marcel, "since you insist upon it. Simply allow me to warn my aunt, who lives upstairs!"

"No, not at all," replied the dowager, walking toward the door, "I will warn her myself, and if she turns me out—why, I shall be very well pleased, monsieur le procureur!"

"Ah! this is enough to drive one mad!" cried Marcel involuntarily; "is it possible that you really believe that Madame d'Estrelle is in hiding here? In that case, come, madame; I will show you the way. When your mind is at rest—"

Marcel was a hundred leagues from imagining that Julie was in his aunt's room. Suddenly, as he hastily opened the studio door, he saw Madame d'Estrelle and Madame Thierry before him, and stood still, in the most painful attitude one can attribute to disappointment.

Julie had heard the marchioness's noisy arrival in the studio. Julien had gone up to tell his mother that a madwoman was below talking nonsense. He had been first of all amazed to see Julie, then sorely distressed by her presence, on learning from her that the madwoman was the dowager in person. Julie recognized her at last, and knew that she would ferret her out if she had to go to the garret. She at once made up her mind what to do, and, taking Madame Thierry's arm, said to her:

"Come! it is not becoming for me to be surprised in your room, like a guilty person in hiding; I prefer to brave the storm, and I feel that I can do it because it is my duty."

Julien, bewildered and ready to explode, remained at the top of the stairs, listening and wondering if Marcel single-handed could save the two women whom he loved and respected above all the world from being insulted by a fury.

But, strangely enough, as soon as the dowager saw those two women before her, her countenance brightened and her anger seemed to vanish. What was her real purpose? To ascertain with her own eyes that she had not been deceived by those who told her that Julie had formed a friendship with the widow Thierry, and consequently that she was her son's mistress. The consequence was slightly forced; but, as Julien had told the marchioness that he did not know Julie, the marchioness had some excuse for believing what she wished to believe. This satisfaction appeased her, as the possession of a victim appeases the excitement of the vulture. She laughed a wicked laugh, glancing at Marcel triumphantly; and said to him, without bowing to anyone, without waiting to be spoken to:

"Come, monsieur le procureur, I am satisfied; I have seen all I want to see here; let us go about our business."

Julie felt the sarcasm and was about to reply to it. She was desperate—so desperate that she desired to tell her secret in presence of everybody. In her view that was the opportunity, or it would never come. Since the tongue of calumny chose to call her a degraded sinner, she proposed to reassert her dignity by avowing a serious passion soon to be consummated by marriage. It was a most courageous act on the part of a woman who had never known how to be brave; so that she was not perfectly cool when she formed that extreme resolution, hastily and without Julien's knowledge.

But she was not allowed to carry it out in that way. Marcel and Madame Thierry each grasped one of her hands, saying almost in unison:

And, while they detained her thus, the dowager passed on without deigning to look at her, and took the path leading to the hôtel, while the honest notary, who was awaiting her outside, and accompanied her, saluted Julie with most significant deference.

"You see," said Marcel, "her own adviser protests against the unworthiness of such conduct; and now that woman has taken off her mask, no one will be on her side against you; but, in God's name, madame, how did you allow yourself to be caught here, where you never come? You are most imprudent I am bound to tell you!"

"My dear Thierry, I have something to say to you," replied Julie. "Go and arrange matters with the marchioness; yield everything in the matter of money, but save my own tiny fortune. I will wait for you here."

"Really, madame," said Julien, as soon as Marcel had gone, "by what unlucky chance do you honor my mother with a visit on the very day when your deadly enemy is watching you? And why do you remain here now, as if to confirm her in her extraordinary suspicions?"

Despite Julien's affectionate and respectful tone, his words contained a sort of rebuke which surprised Madame Thierry.

"Julien," said Madame d'Estrelle earnestly, "the moment to be sincere has arrived. It has arrived sooner than I expected, but it cannot be avoided, and I do not propose to retreat before my destiny. My excellent friend," she cried, throwing her arms about Madame Thierry's neck, "listen to the whole truth. I love Julien. I am bound to him by the most sacred pledges. Embrace and bless your daughter."

"O mon Dieu!" cried Madame Thierry in utter bewilderment, pressing Julie to her heart, "are you married?"

"Surely not, never without your consent," said Julien, embracing his mother in his turn; "but we solemnly promised each other to ask your consent when the time came that there would be nothing in this disclosure likely to alarm your affection. Julie has spoken sooner than I could have wished, but she has spoken, and what can I add? I deceived you, dear mother, I love her madly, and I am the happiest of men because she loves me too!"

Madame Thierry was so profoundly moved by these revelations that it was a long time before she was able to speak. She overwhelmed Julie and Julien with the most loving caresses, and, trembling from head to foot, with cold hands and streaming eyes, she felt a curious mixture of terror and joy. The first feeling was the more powerful, perhaps, for her first words were to ask Julien why, amid his happiness, he seemed to reproach Julie for acting a little too quickly.

"Ah! there you are!" said Julie. "Last evening—for we talk together every evening, dear mother—we agreed to await the final decision as to my fate before revealing our secret to our friends and to you. I saw that I was marching to my destruction. Julien was content. But he would have liked, for my sake, that all the wrong should be on the marchioness's side; and it is quite certain that my resolution, when known and published, will give her numerous partisans in her circle of pious hypocrites and evil-tongued prudes; but for my part I cannot endure the thought of being represented to be a lewd woman, and that would happen if I were afraid to tell the whole truth."

"Yes, of course," replied Julien; "now, we must tell it; but you put forward the hour, my dear Julie! For that rash act I adore you more than ever; but it was my duty not to assent to it. Love and destiny carried the day over my prudence; they made my devotion entirely useless. A truce to reflections! Bless your children, dear mother; Julie has said it, Julie wishes it, and I know that you wish it as much as she does."

While the occupants of the pavilion were thus pouring out their hearts, the marchioness, installed in the salon of the hôtel, proceeded to make a rigidly exact appraisal of both properties. Marcel fought, the notary made sincere but vain efforts to adjust the respective claims. At last they reached a conclusion intensely disappointing to Marcel—that Julie could not hope to save her furniture from the enemy's clutches. It was a great concession to allow her to retain her diamonds and her laces. She had no choice but to submit to those harsh terms, because otherwise she might get nothing; nobody had appeared to outbid the marchioness. Marcel had written to Uncle Antoine, hoping that he would feel a longing for the garden and would not haggle overmuch, for all his wrath; but Uncle Antoine had held aloof.

After a final half hour of discussion concerning the articles, which were already drawn up, divers erasures were made and divers blank spaces filled up. The dowager signed, and as Marcel, still complaining and protesting, started to take the document and submit it to Julie for her ratification, the dowager demanded roughly:

"Why isn't she here? The matter is of sufficient importance for her to leave her dear pavilion for a few moments!"

"You will admit, madame," rejoined Marcel, "that you are not treating the Comtesse d'Estrelle so generously as to make her feel inclined to come into your presence."

"Bah! she is very susceptible! Go to fetch her, Master Thierry! I am in haste to be off, and if, on reading the document, she makes any fuss over it, I am not one of the sort to wait for her. Let her come and state her views here, that will be the shortest way. What is she afraid of? I have nothing more to say to her about her conduct, which I care very little about now, and which I didn't reprove her for after all. Did I say a single word to her just now? If I did touch her a little the other day, it was because she undertook to appeal to feelings which I do not owe her; but let her abstain from recriminations, and I will agree not to humiliate her."

"If you authorize me to go to her with words of peace, and to repeat them in mild and becoming sentences," said Marcel, "I will try to bring her here."

"Moreover," observed the notary, "madame la marquise doubtless has something to say to her outside of the terms of the contract. Madame certainly intends to give her time to find somewhere to go on leaving the hôtel?"

"Yes, yes, to be sure," said the marchioness; "that is my intention. Go, Master Thierry!"

Marcel ran to the pavilion and persuaded Julie to return with him. It had seemed to him that the marchioness, satisfied with her bargain, proposed to try to make some slight amends for her harshness; and it would be more generous of Julie, and perhaps more prudent as well, not to reject that sort of patching up process with which society is accustomed to be content.

Time was pressing, and Marcel was not admitted to the secret at the pavilion; but Julie whispered to Madame Thierry:

"You know now what my marriage portion is; I bring a very small income; but by selling my jewels, we may be able to buy the house at Sèvres. So I am a suitable match for Julien, and everything can be arranged in that direction as nicely as possible."

The marchioness concealed the impatience caused by having to wait a few moments. She was almost polite as she requested Julie to read and sign. Julie took the pen; but as she found that the conciliatory words which Marcel had led her to expect were not forthcoming, she hesitated an instant and glanced at the notary, as if to ask his opinion. Her deferential air did not escape the keen eye of the lawyer, who had a decidedly sympathetic feeling for her.

"This would be the fitting moment," he said to his pitiless client, "to inform madame of your generous intentions with regard to the question still left open."

"Oh! yes, of course," replied the marchioness, "I wish to enter into possession of the hôtel at once, to-morrow at the latest; but I will allow madame to retain the pavilion for two or three months."

"The pavilion?" said Marcel in amazement. "Why, the pavilion is let! Surely madame la marquise knows that it is let for nine years?"

"But the lease is void, Master Thierry, for I did not sign it, and by the provisions of our matrimonial agreements, Monsieur le Marquis d'Estrelle was not empowered to do any act without my express assent."

"So that Madame Thierry will be compelled to give up her lease without indemnity?"

"I am very sorry for her; but you know my contract by heart; look at the lease and you will be satisfied that it is of no validity."

She produced the lease, which was in her pocket, and showed it. There was nothing to be said.

"What difference does this make to you?" said the marchioness, laughing at Marcel's consternation. "Madame la comtesse is still in a position to compensate Madame Thierry for this annoyance. We don't count the expense with our friends!"

"You are right, madame," replied Julie with dignity, "and I thank you for the opportunity you give me of showing my devotion to Madame Thierry. But I decline your gracious offer. Madame Thierry and I will go from your house together in an hour."

"Together?" said the marchioness. "So much frankness was not necessary, madame!"

Julie was about to reply when a loud ring in the antechamber made the marchioness start.

"Come, no useless quarrels!" she said, suddenly changing her tone; "here are visitors. Sign, my dear; let us have done!"

"Excuse me, madame," said Julie, offended by this authoritative tone in her presence, "I am still still in my own house."

Marcel, who had noticed the marchioness's sudden impatience, was conscious of an ill-defined but imperative impulse. He took the pen from Julie's hand. The marchioness turned pale, Marcel kept his eyes upon her.

"Yes," replied Marcel, hastily, for he had seen the visitor's face through the open door.

Julie rose with a gesture of surprise. The marchioness, who was standing, sat down again with an angry exclamation. The horticulturist entered, embarrassed, awkward as usual, but none the less holding his head erect, with the irascible countenance which always presented such a curious contrast to his timid manners. Without a direct salutation to anyone, he walked forward in a zigzag line, but very quickly, to the table, to the document, to the inkstand, and, looking at Julie, said in a sullen tone, in which an indefinable trace of anxiety could be detected:

"Nothing is concluded, since you are here," replied Marcel. "Do you happen to have come to make a bid, monsieur my uncle?"

"No one can bid," said the marchioness, in great excitement. "Everything is settled. I appeal to the good faith of——"

"Good faith is safe enough," retorted Marcel. "We were subjected to harsh conditions. No one ever blamed a man condemned to death, however resigned he might be, for accepting a pardon when it came to him as a surprise. Come, monsieur my uncle, speak! You want the hôtel D'Estrelle. I say more, you need it; you can pull down the wall and make a fine addition to your garden. The hôtel De Melcy is old and dismal and depressing and badly located. This one is cheerful, cool in summer, warm in winter. You want it, you claim it, do you not?"

"This is an outrageous proceeding!" cried the marchioness. "Madame's consent is equivalent to a signature, and an agreement is never retracted at the last moment."

"I beg your pardon, madame," rejoined Marcel, "you were warned. I resisted to the very last minute, and I said to you three times during the discussion: if the door should open at this moment, and a new bidder appear, I don't care who he might be, I would tear up this draft of an agreement which I consider most lamentable for my client. I submitted, I did not consent; I invoke the testimony of my colleague here present. Uncle, everyone knows that you are infallible on questions of honor; tell me, have I the right to object to my client's signing before you have spoken?"

"To be sure," replied Monsieur Antoine, "especially as my rights antedate madame la marquise's. Let us look over this paper!"

"That is not my appraisal, madame la marquise; you pluck your victim too close, and you compel me to remind you of our little agreements."

"Go on, monsieur, overbid me!" replied the dowager. "I am unable to contend against you who have millions. I throw the whole thing over and give up my place to you."

"Wait, wait!" replied Antoine, "we can still agree with a word, madame! I can act here in a way to satisfy everybody. It depends on you!"

"Never!" cried the marchioness indignantly; "you are a lunatic and I am ashamed to have accepted your services!"

She went out, forgetting her notary, and Antoine stood abashed, with contracted brows, buried in mysterious meditation, and with eyes fixed on the door.

"They had agreed to act against me," Julie whispered to Marcel; "now what are they going to do?"

He had no time to explain himself. Monsieur Antoine emerged from his reverie and said, addressing the notary:

"For my own part, monsieur," replied the notary, putting his papers together and looking for his spectacles, "what took place between the marchioness and yourself is a mystery. My client apparently abandoned the object she was pursuing, and I shall await further orders from her before taking part in this affair."

"It is between us two then?" said Monsieur Antoine to Julie, while the notary made his exit.

"No, monsieur," she replied, pointing to Marcel; "I ask your permission to leave you together."

"Why so," said Antoine, with a peculiarly distressed air, putting out his hand to detain her, but not daring to touch her sleeve. "You bear me a grudge, Madame d'Estrelle! You are wrong; everything that I have done is in your interest. Why don't you want me to tell you?"

"Yes, indeed," said Marcel, "why should she refuse to find out what you have on your stomach? Pardon the expression, madame la comtesse, for I am a little irritated; but, pray set me the example of patience. Let us listen, since this is the day to defy the enemy all along the line."

Julie resumed her seat, with a cold and severe glance at Monsieur Antoine, which put the finishing touch to his confusion. He stuttered and stammered, and was incomprehensible.

"Come, come," interposed Marcel, "you don't succeed in making your confession, my poor uncle! It becomes my duty to question you. Let us proceed in order. Why did you leave Paris mysteriously on the day following a certain tragic adventure which happened to one of your plants?"

"Ah! you propose to talk about that, do you?" cried the horticulturist, his little eyes glaring wrathfully.

"Yes, I propose to talk about everything! Answer, or I take the judge away, and your condemnation stands."

"No, monsieur, to my reprobation and my pity," replied Madame d'Estrelle, despite the mute remonstrances of Marcel, who wished to induce his uncle to mend his ways.

"Your pity, pity for me!" he retorted in high dudgeon. "No one ever used that word to me before, and if you were not a woman!"—Then he turned to Marcel. "Pity! why that is contempt! If it was you who advised her to talk like that, you shall pay me for it!"

"Justify yourself if you can," retorted Marcel, boldly; "for if you have behaved as you seem to have done, you are a detestable fellow, and every honorable woman insulted by you has the right to tell you so."

"In what have I insulted her? I have insulted nobody. I saw that she was ruining herself; I tried to prevent her from——"

"From ruining herself! You are talking nonsense, my dear uncle. There are some dangers which a woman like her in whose presence we are does not know and never will know."

"Ah, yes! that is all talk! I am not to be put off with phrases learned in books, I tell you! When a woman makes appointments with a young man——"

"Appointments? Where did you pick up such foolish stuff? The man who told you that lied in his throat!"

"Julien was not with us; he had no more idea that we were downstairs than we had that he was in the gallery. Besides, even if he had been with us, what is this mania of yours for incriminating——"

"Encriminating!" interposed Monsieur Antoine, all whose errors in language we do not attempt to reproduce; "I encriminate what is encriminatable! And what about the long walk at night, arm-in-arm, from the hôtel d'Ormonde to the pavilion, where madame remained, by the way, till three o'clock in the morning? Madame André may have been present at the conversation. I don't deny that; but that's another reason for encriminating, as you call it, you ass of an attorney! And all the meetings in the garden in the evening, when madame never goes in till two o'clock—often later?"

"Where do you pick up this servants' gossip?" cried Marcel, indignantly—"these antechamber slanders?"

"I don't go into antechambers, and I don't get my information from servants; I have my own little police. I am rich enough to pay shrewd ones who watch and tell me the truth. As to that, I don't make any secret of it. I wanted to find out madame's sentiments, the reasons for the affront she put upon me by employing Master Julien to show me the door; that was my right; and, if I revenged myself as I could, that, too, was my right."

Madame d'Estrelle, being determined to tell everything and to take all the consequences, listened to Uncle Antoine with proud impassibility. The brutality of his language, which she attributed to chronic madness, and excused because of his lack of education, did not wound her like the premeditated, deliberate impertinence of the marchioness. Marcel, who watched her during his uncle's fine discourse, mistook the disdainful serenity of her smile for a denial more eloquent than any words could be.

"Why, look at her," he cried, shaking the rich man to make him hold his peace; "observe the paltry effect of the fables and lies you have been made to swallow! You cannot bring the faintest flush to her brow, and her silence confounds your brutal eloquence!"

"I will speak in a moment," said Julie; "let Monsieur Thierry go on. As you see, he does not anger me, and I am waiting until he has finished his account of my conduct and has given me an account of his. You are under the ban of my indignation, Monsieur Antoine Thierry, do not forget it. You claim that you do not deserve it; it remains for you to prove that to my satisfaction."

The old man was confounded for a moment; then, having determined upon his course, he replied:

"Very well, despise me if you choose; I don't care much about that. I have my own esteem and that's enough for me! I was angry, true! I talked about you angrily, vindictively, I don't deny it—and yet I don't hate you, and it rests with you whether you will have me for a friend."

"Confess before imploring absolution," said Marcel; "what has happened? what have you done? Tell us!"

"What has happened? this is what has happened, Mordi! chance helped me to vent my bile. The dowager Madame d'Estrelle sent to beg a favor of me. Two or three days before her husband's death, they sent to ask me to come to her house. I had known her a long while, because she once sold me some land, none too dear. She wasn't so shrewd in business then as she is to-day. She said to me: 'My husband won't last long; I inherit his property; but I don't pay his son's debts unless the countess turns over her dower to me; and to force her to do it I propose to buy up the claims. Lend me the money and you shall have part of the plunder. I will pay you well for obliging me.'—'Excuse me, madame,' I said, 'I want to make that lady feel that I have her in my power; but I want to be able to forgive her if it suits me.'—At that it was: 'Aha! what have you got against her?'—And to that I answered; 'I have what I have!'—'Indeed!'—'No.'—'Tell us,' etc., etc. In short from one thing to another, from one word to another, I unbosomed myself, I told her that I tried to be your friend and that you treated me like a pirate, and all because you had let yourself be drawn into the intrigues of Madame André Thierry, who wanted to marry her son to a great lady from vanity, and to have somebody else do as she did, like the wolf in the fable who had his tail cut off, so they say. And the marchioness was very glad to learn of the adventure, and made me say more than I meant to perhaps, although I took pleasure in telling it to her. At last, to wind up, she said: 'Monsieur Thierry, you must let this fine marriage go on, it suits me!'—'But it don't suit me!' said I.—'Bah! you are in love with her at your age!—Spite, jealousy, can you think of such things?'—'No, madame, I am not in love at my age; but at any age it makes a man angry to be fooled, and I have been fooled. I am not a bad man, but I am powerful, and I propose that they shall find it out. It isn't proper for me to persecute her myself, but when you have worried her well, since it amuses you, I propose to pardon her, if she asks me to.'—'Very well! very well!' said the marchioness. 'I swear to deal fairly with you as a good friend. Lend me the money. Here's my note, and you have my word.'—The lady sent for me again after the marquis was buried. I knew some fine stories about the goings-on here, and I told her everything, and it relieved us both to slaughter the countess. Then the dowager said to me: 'Revenge yourself. I am going to hunt her down to the last ditch.'—And I still said: 'All right, but let me know. I intend to redeem, if she mends her ways.'—Now, the excellent dowager deceived me; but I arrived in time. Everything's at an end between us; she's a crafty woman, she shall pay me for it; that's all I say!"

"You don't tell us everything, uncle. There was something else between you. You said to her just now: 'It depends on you whether everything is settled!'"

"Uncle," said he, "the thing is clear enough to me; as you were unable to marry a countess, you concluded to marry a marchioness. Well, that scheme was more sensible than the other; your ages and your fortunes are more in harmony; but I see that you failed there also. She led you on by some sort of hope in order to get a little of your money, but she went on working on her own account, underhandedly and without your knowledge, to obtain possession of the countess's property, and if you had arrived a minute later, the thing would have been done and you would be neither married nor revenged."

Antoine listened to this homily with his head dropped on his breast, in the attitude of meditation, but furtively watching the smile of surprise and irony which Madame d'Estrelle could not hide.

"As far as not being married to that old shark goes," he said, rising, "I thank the good Lord with all my heart; but, as to the revenge I propose to have here, why, I'll have it, and the devil himself should not deprive me of it."

"Who told you that it concerned you?" cried Uncle Antoine, whose tongue always became loosened sooner or later. "Look you, there are three of you women who have gulled me as if I was a little boy. Women can't do anything else! The first was Madame André long ago, who called me her brother and her friend, and that gave me confidence; the second was you, who called me your good friend and excellent neighbor, so as to coax me to give your lover something to marry on; the third—oh! she called me her dear monsieur and her generous creditor, but she's the worst of the three, because she only wanted to pluck me, like the avaricious vixen she is: so she will have to pay for the other two. As for you, Madame d'Estrelle, I excuse you and forgive you. Love makes people do idiotic things, but at all events it's love, a thing which, so far as I can see, muddles the brain and makes the reason limp. Well, let it go; give me back your friendship, and let us hear no more of marriage, with me or with the other. I still wish you well, and I will prevent you from taking my nephew the painter, because my nephew the painter betrayed me, and because it isn't suitable for you to marry a painter."

"Come, come!" said Marcel, interrupting him, "you were beginning to talk sense; but now your mania is taking hold of you again. That seems to be a fixed idea with you! Where the devil did you fish up that fancy?"

"Stay!" said Julie, "let us put an end to this. You and I are at cross purposes, Monsieur Marcel; I am tired of pretending, when my heart is sincere, and when I have already told the marchioness my intentions clearly enough, in your presence. So let me speak now, and inform you both that my marriage to Julien Thierry is a thing determined and that we are irrevocably pledged to each other. Yes, Marcel, you will be my cousin; and you, Monsieur Antoine, will be my uncle. You have been very accurately informed, and you can pay your spies handsomely. Now that my statement is made, you will see that I am forced to withdraw the expressions I used to characterize your conduct toward me. Whatever you may do henceforth, my respect for our relationship must close my mouth. You are at liberty to abuse me, to slander me and to ruin me. I shall no longer say a word in reply to you, but I shall not implore your favor either; I have nothing to ask at your hands, and the more you oppress me, the more you will increase my gratitude and esteem for the man who is willing to bear the burden of my destiny."

Surprise had struck Marcel dumb. His uncle, who had glanced at him at first with an air of triumph and had seen that his amazement was entirely sincere, became gloomy and irritated anew when Madame d'Estrelle defied him thus to his face.

"So it's all over, is it?" he said, rising; "you have made up your mind and you don't choose to listen to my last propositions?"

"Yes, indeed!" replied Marcel, "say on. I do not myself approve of all Madame d'Estrelle's ideas, and I notify her in your presence that I shall fight against the idea of this marriage. So speak, supply me with arguments."

"You are on the right side this time," rejoined Monsieur Antoine. "Very well; as she turns her head away with an air of obstinacy and contempt—for she is a contemptuous creature, that she is! a niece who will treat me as my honored sister-in-law did—do you tell her what I will do if she will give up her dauber of tulips. I will take care of all her debts, I will let her keep her hôtel, her garden, her pavilion, her diamonds, her farm in Beauvoisis, in fact everything she has left now."

"Wait, wait a moment!" said Marcel to Julie, seeing that she was about to reply.

"No," said Julie; "I will accept nothing from the man who treats Julien and Madame Thierry with such disdain and aversion. I care nothing for his insults to me personally. I forgive monsieur for having exposed me to the sarcasms and slanders of the marchioness and her set; but the enemies of those whom I love can never be my friends, and any benefactions from them are an affront which I spurn."

"Wait, I tell you!" cried Monsieur Antoine, stamping on the floor; "have you the devil in you? Do you think that I propose to ruin your friends? Not at all. I will give them the house at Sèvres, which is mine to-day, if you please! I will make them an allowance, I will assure them a good share of my property when I am dead, for I propose to divide it between you and Julien and this ass of an attorney here! So, you see, I make you all rich and happy, but on one condition: that the pavilion is to be vacated instantly, and that you swear on your honor, and put your oath in writing, that Madame d'Estrelle will never see Monsieur Julien again."

This time Julie was speechless. Even if that inexorable old man were really mad, there was a sort of wild grandeur in that munificence, which recoiled at no sacrifice in the effort to assure the triumph of his jealousy. It was a shrewd move, too, to put Madame d'Estrelle in a position where her refusal would sacrifice Julien's interests, Madame Thierry's and Marcel's. The last-named at once expressed his views in noble language.

"Uncle," he said, "you can take what measures you please with regard to my future. You know me too well to believe that prospects of that sort will ever have any influence on my conscience! I said just now that I was opposed to Madame d'Estrelle's determination: I have some ideas thereupon which it is my duty to submit to her even now; but understand this, that if she does not feel disposed to yield to them, I shall never remind her that her resistance may injure me in your mind, that I shall never allow my dealings with her to be influenced by my personal interests, and finally that, if madame and Julien persist in their purpose of marrying, I shall assist them with my advice and my services, and shall be their friend, kinsman and servant for all time."

Julie silently offered the solicitor her hand. Tears came to her eyelids. She looked at Antoine and saw immovable obstinacy written on his shrivelled, sunburned face.

"Let us go back to Madame Thierry and Julien," she said, rising; "it is for them to decide."

"No!" cried Monsieur Antoine; "I don't propose to have you take them by surprise. At first blush I know very well that the painter will play the great man, and his mother will put on her grand manners, especially in my presence. And then they'll be on their honor before madame, they won't want to be left behind in the matter of pride; they will say just what she did, with the right to repent an hour later; but I will wait to see what you all say to-morrow morning! I will come again. Take then my last word, attorney; do you reflect, also, my fine fellow, and then we shall see if the four of you will agree in refusing my present gifts and what I leave behind me hereafter. Au revoir, Madame d'Estrelle. To-morrow, at twelve o'clock, here!"

Julie, when he had gone, fell back, pale and crushed, on her chair. He turned as he was leaving the salon, and satisfied himself that he had succeeded in shaking that haughty courage. Then he went away in triumph.

VII

By nature, as by profession, Marcel was a foreseeing man. A man may be both practical and generous. Under the inspiration of those two qualities he considered the situation of the lovers and talked to Julie.

"Madame," he said, taking both her hands with an affectionate kindliness in which there was nothing offensive, "begin by disregarding me entirely in this matter. If Julien and his mother are as brave and self-sacrificing as you, I shall admire the sacrifice instead of dissuading them. And first of all do not exaggerate the future consequences of your action. Monsieur Antoine is a man of his word, that is certain; in good as in evil, he does what he promises. But the matter of his last will is a great problem, because he is now on the downward slope of marriage. Surely it is a most extraordinary thing to see that old bachelor, a confirmed foe of women and of love, rush headlong into this matrimonial caprice in his declining years; as it bears the stamp of monomania, no promise, no resolution that he may make can protect him from it. He will find what he is seeking, be sure of that: some titled woman or other, young or old, virtuous or not, beautiful or ugly, will allow herself to be tempted by his cash and will swallow all his property. So this simplifies the question, and you may put aside the consideration of our inheritance. There is nothing certain beyond the present facts, and you see I am not at all interested. So let us consider these present facts which are submitted for our consideration. They are of very serious consequence. I know Uncle Antoine; what he proposes to do, he does in twenty-four hours or never. To-morrow he will be here with documents all prepared, drawn up by himself in more or less barbarous style, but with not a dot over an i missing that would make them good and binding, incontestable in the eye of the law, which he knows better than I do myself. These documents will not set forth in any form of words the strange provision, unforeseen in legislation, that you shall formally break off relations with a certain person; but they may very well impose the condition that you are not to marry again without Monsieur Antoine's assent, and that they shall be revocable at once in case of rebellion on your part. So we must not hope to evade the stipulation which he demands; moreover, your character is an assurance that you would not think of doing so."

"You are right, monsieur," said Julie with a sigh, "I shall never make a promise and not keep it."

"Here we are then," continued Marcel, "face to face with an incredible, but very real, closely impending fact, conclusive concerning the existence of two persons who are dear to you, my aunt and Julien, since my reasoning places me outside of the reckoning. You must reflect seriously. Do you wish me to leave you alone for that purpose, or will you allow me to say to you at once what I would have said to you an hour ago if you had taken me for a confidant before Monsieur Antoine appeared?"

"Very well, madame; let us suppose that, despite his anger, Monsieur Antoine outbids the marchioness; see how straitened your circumstances will be; two or three thousand francs a year! You marry Julien, who has nothing in the world but his arms, and soon you will be a mother, with Madame Thierry to support and care for, a servant for her, and a nurse for yourself, and a manservant, unless Julien lays aside his brushes when the heavy work of the household is to be done, however modest it may be. You will certainly live honorably, for he will work; Madame Thierry will knit all the stockings for the family, and you will be economical. You will have a single silk dress and will wear calicoes. You will always walk when you go out, and you will not indulge yourself in a bit of ribbon without counting on your fingers to see if your little savings will stand it. That is how my wife began life when I purchased my office. Well, I can tell you, madame, that we were not very happy then, and yet we loved each other dearly; my wife was not vain, we had never been well-to-do, and we did not know what luxury was. We knew how to go without; but we were anxious,—my wife because I worked half the night and trotted about, tired out and with a cold in my head, at all hours and in all weathers; and I, because she had to go without fresh air and good food, forever harnessed to household duties and the labors of maternity. Each of us suffered from constant, painful solicitude for the other. I give you my word that the more dearly we loved each other, the more worried we were and the more we lacked real happiness. We lost two children; one that we had to put out to nurse in the country where he was not well cared for; the other we decided to keep at home, and the foul air of Paris, combined with the poor health he inherited from his mother, prevented him from developing. If we have succeeded in raising the third, it is only because we were in somewhat easier circumstances by dint of economy and industry. To-day we are very happy and free from anxiety; but we are forty years old and we have suffered terribly! Our earlier years were a constant struggle, and often a martyrdom. Such is the life of the petty bourgeois of Paris, madame la comtesse; that of the poor artist is even worse, for his profession is less reliable than mine. People constantly have matters in dispute, which cause them to have recourse to the solicitor; but they don't always need pictures, and most people never need them. They are pure luxuries. Julien will not make a small fortune, as his father did. His character and talent are even more highly esteemed perhaps; but he has not the attractive frivolity, the taste for society and the brilliant external qualities which cause a certain sort of people to become infatuated with an artist, bring him out, sing his praises, and make him shine resplendent. Let me tell you that my Uncle André's talent, genuine as it was, would never have extricated him from poverty, if he had not been a fine table-singer, a great man for clever remarks and piquant anecdotes, and if certain influential but volatile ladies had not from time to time made him unfaithful to his wife, whom he adored none the less, but of whom he said under his breath, innocently enough, that he must needs deceive her a little, in her own interest.—You lose color!—Julien will not follow that example of a time which has gone by; but it will be of no use for Julien to produce masterpieces, he will remain poor. Society does not become infatuated with modest merit, and does not travel about in quest of unknown virtue. His marriage with you will make a certain noise, a little scandal which will bring him into notice. His father's marriage had that result at the time; but, once more I say, times have changed: the world is more austere or more hypocritical to-day than in La Pompadour's day. Then, too, the same sort of adventure doesn't succeed twice. People will say that youngster is very presumptuous to try to mimic his father; and you will raise up more enemies than patrons for him. There will be a great outcry against you. I don't suppose that the marchioness will try to have you put in a convent and him in the Bastille, for the crime of misalliance: she has no rights over you; but she will injure you much more by crying you down, and you will not have the rigors of persecution to make you interesting. People know you, they know that you are rigidly virtuous; the reaction will be all the more violent and implacable, the old prudes will go about everywhere saying that as such marriages threaten to become common in society, they cannot be endured and must be severely condemned. Even the liberally-minded—some of whom are Julien's patrons now—will not dare to defend you. They too belong to society to-day. They are no longer persecuted but are caressed and flattered, and Paris is still quivering over the triumph awarded Monsieur de Voltaire after his long exile. People laugh at Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who believed that he was still a victim of the machinations of bigots, and who might have lived in peace and honor, so they say, if his heart had not been soured and his mind diseased. The philosophers have the upper hand to-day; they are no longer over-solicitous to fight against prejudice, and the remnant of the great crusade of free-thinkers will not mend its pen and sharpen its tongue to sustain your cause against the outcry of the salons. All these cowardly blows, all these insults will eventually fall on Julien's heart. He will live in never-ending anxiety, always on the quivive; he will fall out with all his friends; he may fight with some of them——"

"Enough, enough, Marcel," said Julie, weeping. "I see that I have been mad, that I have been led by the counsel of a selfish passion, or by my absolute ignorance of social necessities. I see that Julien's life would be made burdensome by public reprobation, that life would be a never-ending source of danger and unhappiness.—Ah! Marcel, you have broken my heart; but you have done your duty, and I esteem you the more. Let us go and tell Julien that I mean to break—Mon Dieu! how shall I tell him that?"

"Julien will not believe you! He will laugh at your generous pretence; he will tell you that he longs to suffer for you. He is courageous and strong, and I have no doubt that he adores you. If you consult him, his first exclamation will be: 'Love at any price, love and persecution, love and poverty!'—He does not doubt himself, and his mother, who is equal to him in the matter of courage and unselfishness, will assist him to sacrifice everything; but imagine Julien a year or two hence, when he sees his mother suffer. Only by the most extraordinary efforts is he able now to shield her from the horrors of poverty, and in spite of him, in spite of herself, in spite of everything, she suffers on that account, you may be sure. Madame Thierry is an enthusiast, in nowise a stoic. She was brought up to do nothing, and she doesn't know how to do anything but knit and read, sitting comfortably in her easy-chair. Moreover her health is frail. She is not like my wife, she would not sit up till midnight mending her son's shirts; her beautiful hands are no better acquainted with fatigue than yours. What will happen then, when Julien has a wife and children? He will blame himself for your miseries, and if remorse ever gains a foothold in that proud heart, farewell to courage and perhaps to talent!"

"Enough, I tell you, my dear Marcel. Advise me, guide me; command, for I surrender. Must I not see him or speak to him?"

"No, you certainly must not, my dear countess. He must know nothing of what has happened, and Monsieur Antoine's gifts must fall into his hands without any suspicion on his part of the terms on which our uncle became tractable. Otherwise, he would be quite capable of refusing them."

"Marcel," said the countess, rising and ringing the bell, "I must leave this house instantly and never return!"

"I shall carry nothing away," she said to Marcel. "You must pay my servants, collect my most necessary effects and send them to me."

"To a convent, outside Paris, I don't care where, provided that nobody but you knows where I am."

Camille appeared. Julie bade her fetch her cloak, and, when she had left the room again, continued:

"You see, my friend, if I remain here a moment longer, Madame Thierry, being anxious on account of what happened at her house, will come to make inquiries, and even if I should feign before her—this evening, ah! yes, this evening Julien would wait for me in the garden, and when I failed to appear, he would not be able to refrain from coming to my window and tapping on it.—I should not have the strength to leave him in the grasp of mortal anxiety, and I could not lie to him. No, no, let us go! I hear the cab coming into the courtyard. Come, do not give me time to lose what little courage I have!"

They drove about at random at first, the countess having given the cabman the address of one convent, then of another, having no idea where she really wished to go. At last Marcel persuaded her to go to the Ursulines at Chaillot, where he had a cousin who was a nun; and he waited until she was settled there, himself paying the price of her lodging and board for a week, reserving the right to prolong the arrangement if the countess were properly treated. Julie took the name of Madame d'Erlange, and Marcel's cousin, whom he enjoined to commend her warmly to the superior, was not taken into the secret. As Julie took refuge in the convent as a lodger, she was allowed to detain Marcel in her room in order to give him her instructions.

"I absolutely refuse," she said, "to accept Monsieur Antoine's benefactions in any shape; they were hateful to me, and I no longer need any consideration at his hands. Let him pay himself in full, as he is now my only creditor, as he has everything of mine in his hands. I have nothing left but my twelve hundred francs a year, and, as I must live alone hereafter, I need nothing more. Do not let him leave me my furniture; do not let him send me my diamonds; I will not receive them. He may draw up with his own hands the agreement I am to sign, pledging myself never to marry. I will sign it in exchange for the gift to Madame Thierry of the house at Sèvres, and an allowance which you will do your best, in my name, to make as large as possible. You will also demand that neither Madame Thierry nor her son be informed of the truth with respect to my action. You will tell them that I have gone away; that I cannot, that I do not wish to receive them again, because—Oh! mon Dieu! what will you tell them! I have no idea! Tell them whatever you can invent that is least cruel, but most irrevocable, for we must not leave them any of the hopes deferred which make the heart sick, and render the final awakening the more bitter.—Tell them—no, tell them nothing. Alas! alas! I have no strength left to think or decide; I have no strength left for anything!"

"I will reflect," said Marcel; "I will think it over as I return. I leave you in despair; but I must go to get your clothes; I must prevent Julien from being panic-stricken and losing his head at the first moment, and I must reassure your servants, who would otherwise wait for you, and perhaps engage in compromising comments or investigations when you failed to return. Come, madame, be heroic! Calm yourself; I will return this evening, or sooner if I can. I will try to bring you some consoling news from the pavilion; I must succeed in deceiving Julien, although I have no more idea than you how I shall succeed in doing it. Au revoir. Wait for me; do not write to anyone. We must not contradict each other. You will weep bitterly! I have caused you much suffering, poor woman! And now I must leave you alone. It is horrible!"

As he spoke, Marcel unconsciously shed tears. Seeing his affliction and his unselfish devotion, Julie urged him to go, and strove to display an energy which she did not possess. As soon as she was alone, she locked her door, threw herself on the poor, shabby bed which had been prepared for her, buried her face in the pillow, stifling her sobs, wringing her hands, and abandoning herself to her grief so completely that she lost all consciousness of the place where she was and all memory of the events which had driven her thither so abruptly.

Marcel, returning to the cab, wiped his streaming eyes, blamed himself for his weakness, and argued the facts anew.

He had one last hope which he had thought best not to suggest to Julie, namely, to prevail upon Monsieur Antoine. He drove to his house first; but he wasted there all the eloquence of his heart and his reason. The selfish fellow was happy, triumphant; he was drinking his revenge with gusto, and he did not propose to leave a drop in the bottom of the glass. All that Marcel could obtain, after exchanging many reproaches and invectives, was that Julien and his mother should be left in ignorance of the bargain by which they were made rich.

"You are trying to do a very difficult thing," he said; "do not make it impossible. Madame d'Estrelle is the only one who has submitted thus far. Julien would surely resist; deceive him unless you wish to make Julie's submission useless to your vengeance."

"You tire me with your Julie!" cried Monsieur Antoine. "She deserves a great deal of pity, doesn't she, when I am giving her everything—fortune, social consideration and liberty!"

"As if people died of that! Pretty twaddle in a lawyer's mouth! Let her make a good marriage suited to her rank, I won't oppose it; she can marry anyone she chooses. I bar nobody but the dauber. Within a fortnight she will open her eyes and thank me. She will recognize my grandeur of soul and will call me her benefactor. Upon my word, you are all cracked! I pull hundreds of thousands of francs from my pocket; I throw them by the handful to ingrates and fools, and they call me cruel kinsman, hard heart, old hound, old miser and God knows what! The world is upside down just now, on my word!"

"They won't call you all those names, uncle; they won't call you any name. There are no names to describe the oddity of your character, and nobody else in the world could have discovered the secret of causing the hand that enriches to be cursed!"

"Bah! you are using big words; you fancy you're at the bar! Off with you, you bore me to death. Tell your Julien whatever you choose; I don't want to see him or you or anybody. I am going back to the country."

"That is to say that you will shut yourself up here and barricade yourself against all the strong arguments I can bring forward."

"Possibly! now you know that your strong arguments will be wasted; they will stay at the door."

Marcel was careful not to tell his uncle that there was a much simpler and less expensive way to prevent the marriage: namely, to abandon Madame d'Estrelle to her destruction, and trust to the wise and generous reflections to which she had opened her mind. Nor did he feel called upon to tell him that she refused his gifts.

"After all," he thought, "who knows how long this passion will last? In a short time, perhaps, Julie will have conquered it, and then it will be very agreeable to her to know that she is free and still rich."

He and Monsieur Antoine drew up a conditional discharge of the whole of her debt, and he succeeded in procuring the insertion of this important modification, that Madame d'Estrelle was at liberty to enter into wedlock with anyone she chose except an untitled person. He procured Monsieur Antoine's signature and seal to the document, and put it in his pocket, pending an opportune time to hand it to Madame d'Estrelle, that is to say, when she should be less agitated.

The deed of gift of the house at Sèvres and of an income of five thousand francs in the public funds was all ready. Marcel had to fight a terrible battle to prevent the insertion of a restriction analogous to that to which Julie was expected to submit. He argued that, as Julie had promised not to marry Julien, it was entirely useless for Julien to pledge himself not to marry Julie.

"But your Julie can very easily give up her fortune, and then when the other has made enough to live on, I shall have made a fine mess of it! I shall have married them! No, no! I propose to have a letter from this lady pledging herself on her honor and her religion never again in her lifetime to see this gentleman, with his name all spelled out. Women are bound tighter by such gilt-edged notes than by all your parchments. They are more afraid of scandal than of pettifogging. I must have that billet-doux addressed to me, or I'll not let anything go."

Julien was intensely agitated; he had not dared to ask any questions at the hôtel. He had sent his mother to reconnoitre, and she found all the apartments on the garden side closed. He did not know whether the dowager was still there, he knew nothing of Monsieur Antoine's visit and Julie's departure; he was surprised that, after confiding in Madame Thierry, she could not find time to send her three lines to set her mind at rest as to the results of the disturbance caused by the dowager. He anxiously awaited the evening. Black thoughts rushed into his mind.

"Who knows that the dowager and Monsieur Antoine have not plotted together to have Julie abducted and confined in a convent on the ground of misconduct?"

At that time it was no longer very easy to obtain lettres de cachet; but by going through formalities, an ex post facto judgment, etc., arbitrary incarceration could still be accomplished under the forms of law, especially as an intrigue with a plebeian might still be looked upon in official society as a scandal which a family was entitled to put down.

Julien was going mad when Marcel arrived. Madame Thierry was downcast and very sad. Marcel saw that was not the moment to be outspoken.

"I have some news for you," he said, forcing himself to assume an untroubled and even cheerful countenance. "We were about to sign, when Uncle Antoine appeared like a god from the clouds at the Opera. He lost his temper and had a row with the dowager, who, up to that time, had been acting in concert with him against Madame d'Estrelle; but he has repented of his folly, he proposes to give you a magnificent indemnity; he takes this opportunity to make amends for all the wrong he has done, and he does it handsomely, I must say; so be grateful to him for it, also for his intention to deal handsomely with Madame d'Estrelle. He will probably leave her twice as much as the dowager intended to leave her; so she thought that it was her duty to show her gratitude by yielding at once to a whim he had of turning her out of the hôtel——"

"Gone! gone! she is going to pass a few days in the country; what is there so surprising in that?"

"I do not wish to know anything outside of the serious matters which require all my attention," Marcel replied with decision. "I have heard to-day many foolish remarks, offensive insinuations and impertinent comments. I prefer to believe none of them and to remember none of them. The name of Madame Julie d'Estrelle is sacred to me; but I have advised her to disappear for a few days."

"Parbleu! one would think we were in Madrid and that she had been immuned for life in a convent cell! What is the cause of this tragic mood? I simply urged her to pretend to be dead for a week or two, long enough to settle her affairs and find out where she stands. Let us keep quiet and show neither anxiety nor displeasure on account of her absence. Let us not stir up the marchioness's evil designs, which Monsieur Antoine's intervention has blocked to some extent for the moment. Above all, let us make sure that Julie does not lose the rich old fellow's protection and esteem. This is no time to puzzle over the man's strange logic; the devil could not explain it. The thing to do is to make the most of it, and no one of us three must think of himself or of anything but Madame d'Estrelle's future."

Thereupon he went into detailed calculations which compelled Julien's attention. It was a matter of saving a modest competence for Julie by a little prudence, or of throwing it away by excessive pride. Her reputation was not yet compromised in society, and it was entirely unnecessary that it should be. Thus far the plot against her formed by the marchioness and Monsieur Antoine had not been executed. They had been waiting for her to provoke the explosion by an attempt to resist the dowager's claims. It was Monsieur Antoine's duty now to protect Julie against the charges of which he was the author. He alone could do it, having in his pocket weapons against the common enemy. He was inclined to do it, he was penitent after his manner, he hated the marchioness, he insisted that everything should be left to him to settle: they must simply bow their heads and wait in silence.

Julien was still ill at ease on one point. Did Monsieur Antoine propose to take full charge of Madame d'Estrelle's destiny and will-power in order to bring her to consent to the abominable idea of marrying him? Marcel was able to reassure him completely in that respect, and he gave him his word that fancy had permanently moved out of the old sphinx's brain. Finally, Julien asked Marcel if he would also give him his word that he had advised Julie to go away suddenly, if she was free to return when she chose, and if she was thoroughly convinced that her absence would be of benefit to herself and only to herself. Marcel was able to swear that all this was true.

"I do know; but I cannot tell anyone; she made me promise. If she desires to confide her whereabouts to anybody else, she will write; but as she is very anxious that Monsieur Antoine and the dowager should not know, I think that it will be best for her to have no other confidant but me. Now that all this is cleared up, let me tell you what Monsieur Antoine proposes to give you by way of indemnity for the lease."

"One moment!" said Julien; "was this indemnity demanded, insisted upon by Madame d'Estrelle? Was it not the price of some new torture inflicted on her pride, of some sort of sacrifice on her part?"

"There was nothing whatever to dispute about," said Marcel. "Monsieur Antoine declared his purpose without any demand or concession whatsoever. He probably always intended to make you this gift, for he is the owner of the house at Sèvres, and he gives it to you. Here are your deeds."

"Mon Dieu!" cried Madame Thierry, as she looked over the papers, "and an annuity too? I feel as if I were dreaming, I am happy, and I am afraid!"

"Yes," said Julien, still suspicious, "there is something under this, a trap perhaps!"

Marcel had great difficulty in inducing them to accept Monsieur Antoine's treacherous gift. He had to tell them, to swear to them that it was Madame d'Estrelle's earnest desire. He left them as tranquil as possible, Julien struggling not to disturb by his apprehensions the delight which his mother could not but feel at the thought of returning to the home where she had lived happily so many years. Marcel then hurried to the hôtel D'Estrelle and ordered Camille to pack up such articles as her mistress needed for a brief stay in the country.

"Ah! mon Dieu!" said the amazed Camille, "does not madame la comtesse send for me to join her?"

"But madame can neither dress nor arrange her hair alone! Think of it! a lady who has always been served according to her rank!"

"She must be with some poor people then, since she dislikes to have her own servants boarded there. Perhaps madame is really ruined herself? Alas! alas! such a kind and generous mistress!"

Camille began to weep, and, although her tears were perfectly sincere, she added:

"I will pay everything to-morrow," replied Marcel, who was accustomed to that blending of sentiment and practicalness which is always noticeable in such disasters; "have all the household accounts prepared, and meanwhile take the keys. You will be responsible for everything until to-morrow."

"Very good, monsieur, I will be responsible," said the maid, beginning to sob afresh; "but are we to leave madame's service? will madame not return?"

Marcel wrote to his wife that he had no time for dinner or supper, and that she need not expect him until ten or eleven o'clock at night. He returned to the convent. Julie had exhausted all her vitality in tears. She had risen again, she had bathed her pale face, streaked with the fire of tears, in cold water. She was calm, downcast, and resembled a living corpse. She revived a little when she learned that Marcel had succeeded in deceiving Julien, and in inducing him to accept, without undue suspicion, the comparative affluence which Monsieur Antoine bestowed on his mother and him. She wrote a note to Monsieur Antoine at Marcel's dictation, pledging herself never to see Julien again during her life, on condition that Julien should never be deprived of the house at Sèvres or the annuity. She would not make a similar stipulation concerning her own fortune, and Marcel dared not speak to her as yet of accepting Monsieur Antoine's discharge of her debts. She made no complaint; she was thoroughly exhausted, and Marcel, as he shook hands with her, felt that she was feverish. He persuaded her to see Sister Sainte-Juste, his cousin, and he urged the sister to have someone sleep in the next room. He did not go away until he had, with the solicitude of a father, seen everything arranged as he wished.

Julie passed a quiet night; hers was not one of those obstinate natures which struggle for a long time. Her conscience told her that she had done her duty, and the first suffering was so sudden and violent that she soon yielded to exhaustion and slept. The next morning she thanked the nun who had passed the night with her, and asked to be left alone. She dressed herself and arranged her hair, and, realizing that she was very awkward and unskilful in waiting on herself, she determined to conquer her habits, to put her room to rights and make her bed, arrange her clothes, and establish herself in that poor cell as if she were to pass her life there. She did all this mechanically, without effort and without reflection. When it was done, she sat down, clasped her hands about her knee, and looked out through the open window but saw nothing, listened to the convent bells but heard nothing, and did not dare think of eating, although she had taken nothing for twenty-four hours. If lightning had struck in the middle of her room it would not have startled her.

About noon, Sister Sainte-Juste found her in this state of listless contemplation, which she mistook for a beatific reverie. Some broken hearts are still so sweet and gentle that one does not suspect their suffering; but the sister had noticed, as she passed through the room used as an antechamber and dining-room, that the breakfast brought by the servant had grown cold untouched.

"No, sister," replied the poor unhappy creature, who did not choose to allow herself to be pitied, "I was waiting for my appetite to come."

The nun urged her to eat, obligingly waited on her, and thought to divert her mind by her harmless, unmeaning chatter. Julie listened with inexhaustible good humor, and carried mental submission so far as to seem interested in all the minutiæ of that recluse's life, all the details of the regulations of the convent, all the dull little events which occupied the leisure of the community. What did she care whether she heard that or something else? It was no longer in the power of anyone to annoy or tire her. She was like an empty heart through which everything passes and in which nothing remains.

"Why did you tell me that lady was ill and had reasons for being unhappy? She slept soundly without saying a word, she breakfasted reasonably well, although a little late, and she took great pleasure in talking with me. She is a very amiable person and she has no serious sorrow. I give you my word that she has not, for I know about such things!"

Marcel was alarmed by this sorrow without reaction. He came to tell her what had taken place that morning at the hôtel D'Estrelle. Julie confined herself to asking him for news of Julien and his mother. When she learned that they were moving and that they were to pass that night at Sèvres, she would not listen to anything else.

"I do not propose to hate anyone any more," she said; "it would cause me more misery and do no good. Do not mention Monsieur Antoine to me for three or four days. I beg you, my friend, allow me to become accustomed to my lot as best I can. You see that I do not rebel; that is all that is necessary."

On the following days Marcel found her calmer and calmer. She was very pale; but the nun assured him that she slept and ate as much as was necessary, and that was true. She did nothing during the day and did not wish to see anyone, declaring that she was not at all bored. That also was true. She was preoccupied, and sometimes she smiled. Marcel could not understand it at all; he urged her to consult the convent physician, who found her pulse a little weak, her complexion a little phlegmatic, as they said in those days to indicate the presence of a certain amount of lymph in the system. He prescribed quinine and told Marcel that it would amount to nothing.

JULIE AT THE CONVENT AT CHAILLOT

Julie obediently took the quinine, walked about the garden of the convent, consented to receive visits from several nuns, impressed them as a very attractive person.

It did amount to nothing, except that the heart was dying and the life fading away with it. Julie obediently took the quinine, walked about the garden of the convent, consented to receive visits from several nuns, impressed them as a very attractive person, promised to read some new books which Marcel brought her and which she did not open, prepared a piece of embroidery which she did not begin, lived almost unnoticed in the cloister, thanks to her unobtrusive manners, and continued to waste away, slowly, without paroxysms, but without remission.

Marcel was deceived by appearances. Seeing that she was so placid mentally, and mistaking that sudden disappearance of the will for the symptom of a struggle between a mighty will-power and nature itself, he sought the remedy where it was not. He turned his attention to her physical health. He hired a small country house at Nanterre, and, giving Julie to understand that he had purchased it for her, carried her thither; then, having made sure of Camille's discretion and devotion to her mistress, he sent for her. He supplied her with enough money to enable her to hire a peasant woman who could cook, and he made arrangements that the countess's table should be daintier and more substantial than that at the convent. The little house was located in an airy spot, with a garden of considerable size surrounded by walls, and with not sufficient shade to keep the sun from doing its healthful work. He supplied the salon with books, little articles to provide occupation or amusement, and Julie's harp—every woman in those days performed on that instrument more or less. Marcel having taught her her lesson, Camille deceived her mistress as to what had happened at the hôtel D'Estrelle, and as to the means at her disposal. She made her believe that everything was extremely cheap at Nanterre, and that she could afford to live comfortably without exceeding the limits of her small income. Julie wished to be poor and to owe nothing to Monsieur Antoine. That was the only point on which Marcel had found her resistance invincible. He had been forced to lie, and to let her believe that Monsieur Antoine had taken possession of her house, her diamonds and everything that belonged to her.

The diamonds were in Marcel's custody, the house was kept in excellent condition. The horses were in the stable, well cared for, and the carriages in the carriage-house. The servants had been paid off and discharged, under orders to return, upon advantageous terms, as soon as Madame d'Estrelle should return. The concierge took care of the house, groomed and exercised the horses. His wife dusted the rooms, opened and closed the windows. Monsieur Antoine's head gardener attended to the flowers and lawns. Monsieur Antoine himself visited the place every morning. The pavilion, after Madame Thierry had gone away, was closed and silent. But nothing was changed in Julie's abode. Every piece of furniture was in its place, and the sun shone through the windows of her empty salon.

Two months had passed since the day that Julie left the hôtel. Uncle Antoine was simply the caretaker and painstaking administrator of the property. He had retained his privilege of being admitted there, pending the time when it should please Julie to resume possession. He desired to return it to her intact, and to reëmploy such of her servants as she might wish to have about her. The concierge was ordered to inform visitors that madame continued to own her house for the present, and that she had gone to inspect her estate in the Beauvoisis and to make some definite plans for the future; that is to say, Monsieur Antoine, in concert with Marcel, having in view the what will people say? represented Madame d'Estrelle's situation as the continuation of an armistice with her creditors; and as she had been in that situation for more than two years already, that was really the most plausible explanation. They would see about inventing a perfectly convincing one when Julie should consent to return.

It is true none the less that Julie's friends, the old Duc de Quesnoy, madame la présidente, Madame Desmorges, Abbé de Nivières and the rest, began to be much surprised that they did not hear from her. Her sudden departure had been accepted with reasonably good grace, thanks to the hints adroitly strewn about by the solicitor; but why did she not write? She must be very lazy; or perhaps she was ill? Was she really in the Beauvoisis?—But the old duke had to go to take the waters of Vichy; madame la présidente was engrossed by the marriage of her daughter; the abbé was like the household cat—he forgot everything when the fire on the hearth died out. Madame Desmorges was indolence personified. The Marquise d'Estrelle alone would have been likely to investigate the subject seriously, but her malice was suddenly paralyzed by a sharp threat from Monsieur Antoine to disclose her conduct and demand his money, if she ventured to make the slightest investigation or the faintest derogatory remark concerning Julie.

As will be seen, Monsieur Antoine behaved with extraordinary fairness, prudence and loyalty, in everything that concerned the reputation, the comfort and the pecuniary interests of his victim. He listened to Marcel's advice, discussed it with him as if the question at issue were what it was best to do for his own daughter, and followed it exactly. Touching the fundamental question as to which Marcel did his utmost to bend him, the union of the two lovers, he was inflexible; and as he lost his temper when Marcel pressed him too hard on that subject, sulked and shut the door in his face, Marcel was compelled, in his client's interest, to submit to delays of which he could see no end.

Madame Thierry and Julien were luxuriously established in their pretty cottage, for the best part of the furniture had been left there, as well as divers artistic objects of considerable value which Uncle Antoine had disdained to notice because he had no idea of their value. Julien had no confidence in this unexpected generosity, for which he had been warned not to thank Monsieur Antoine, and which was surrounded with inexplicable circumstances. He was so disturbed about it that, except for the duty of sacrificing his own pride to his mother's repose, he would have refused everything. Their position was excellent from a material standpoint. The income of five thousand francs enabled them to live modestly without awaiting anxiously the avails of Julien's feverish labor at the end of each week. Madame Thierry could not help feeling the most heartfelt delight in being restored to her house, her most cherished memories, her former habits and connections. The latter were less numerous than in the days when her table was always laid, but they were more reliable. Her only true friends came forward once more. Knowing that she had no more than was absolutely necessary, they exerted themselves to provide an advantageous market for Julien's pictures. Not until one has ceased to suffer from poverty can one make the most of his talent. Julien no longer needed to hurry; his customers came unsolicited, through the intervention of enlightened and kindly friends. He consoled his mother for the secret dissatisfaction she still felt in being Monsieur Antoine's debtor, by saying to her:

"Never fear, I will pay your debt to him, against his will, if need be; it is simply a question of time. Be happy; you see that I am not disturbed by Julie's silence, but that I am waiting confidently and calmly."

Julien had changed neither in bearing, nor manner, nor feature, since the fatal day of Julie's disappearance. At first he had believed what Marcel said; but, as no letter arrived from his mistress, and as he knew beyond doubt, as the result of inquiries he had made secretly, that she was not in the Beauvoisis, he had gradually detected a part of the horrible truth. Julie was free, for Marcel had sworn it on his honor, again and again; but as to certain other points he did not swear. He asserted nothing; he simply left them to their presumptions. He refused with shrewd persistence to listen to any confidential communication, which made it easier for him to evade many questions. Monsieur Antoine's machiavelian plan was too eccentric to be fathomed by Julien's straightforward mind. He did not suppose that jealousy was possible without love, and he would have considered that he insulted Julie's image by admitting that the old man was in love with her. The old man was not in love, that is certain; but he was as jealous as a tiger of Julien, and jealousy without love is the most implacable form of jealousy. Julien believed that he was mad. Can anyone divine the schemes of a madman?

"No!" said Julien to himself, "pecuniary consideration cannot have influenced that noble heart. Julie wishes to break with me; she chooses to bring about the rupture in silence. It is painful to her, but she considers it necessary. She trembled for her reputation; the marchioness threatened to ruin her, and her friends must have succeeded in convincing her that she could never rehabilitate herself after marrying a plebeian. Such is the opinion of society. Julie fancied for a moment that she was superior to such prejudices; her love for me led her to presume too far on her strength. She has a noble nature, but her mind is a little weak perhaps, and now the force of her character is being exerted to bring about the triumph of the prejudice which kills love. Poor dear Julie! She must suffer, because she is kind-hearted—because she understands my suffering. So far as she is concerned, I feel certain that she desires to forget me."

Marcel had stronger hopes of Julien's mental cure than of Julie's. He saw him as infrequently and for as short a time as possible. One day, when he was obliged to go to report to his aunt concerning a small matter which she had placed in his hands, he found her alone.

"No, he is turning his attention to gardening. Since he has had this little plot of land to dig and plant, he is more easily consoled for everything. He has had a great sorrow, Marcel! a sorrow of which you know nothing. He loved Madame d'Estrelle; I was not mistaken; and, more than that——"

"Yes, yes!" said Marcel, who desired to avoid any sentimental scene; "that has gone by, hasn't it? that is all over?"

"Yes," replied the widow, "I think so. If he were deceiving me—But no! after the hopes he has had it is not possible, is it, my boy? You can't cheat the eyes of a mother who adores you?"

"No, of course not. Sleep in peace, dear aunt! I will go to bid Julien good-day.—If he is really deceiving his mother after the failure of his hopes," he thought as he looked for Julien among the shrubbery, "he must be a devilishly strong fellow!"

Julien was digging a little hole in which to transplant a tree. He wore a linen blouse and his head was bare. Standing in the loose earth, with his hands resting on the handle of his spade, like a laborer taking breath, he was musing so deeply that he did not hear his cousin's step, and Marcel, who saw his profile only, was profoundly impressed by the expression of his face. That manly countenance did not as yet bear the marks of sorrow which were already impairing Julie's beauty; but it had the tense, drawn look of despair which Marcel had had an opportunity to study on her face.

Julien spied his cousin, did not start at sight of him, and greeted him with a smile. It was precisely the same smile of lifeless affability with which Julie greeted him, a sweet but terrible smile, like that which we sometimes see playing about the lips of a dying man.

"This looks bad!" thought Marcel. "He is devilishly strong, no doubt, but he is probably the sicker of the two."

Marcel in his distress had not the strength to conceal his emotion. He loved Julien dearly; his prudence deserted him.

"Yes, my friend, you know very well that I am unhappy," replied the artist, dropping his spade and walking with his cousin under the trees. "How could it possibly be otherwise? You are well aware that I loved a certain woman, for my mother told you so. That woman has gone away. Don't tell me that she will return; I know perfectly well that she must return; but I know too that it is my duty never to seek her presence again, and to say to myself that she is dead to me."

"Yes, if it is my duty! You understand, my friend, that a man must always accept his duty."

"Yes, a man is a man. I am terribly unhappy, Marcel! I propose to endure it. I could endure it alone, you may be sure of that, but you can help me a little. Why do you refuse? What you have been doing the last two months is very cruel."

"How can I help you?" said Marcel, suspecting some stratagem devised by passion to discover Julie's retreat.

"Mon Dieu!" replied Julien, reading his friend's thoughts, "it's a very simple matter; you can tell me that she is happier than I am, that is all."

"You see her two or three times a week! Come, you have done your duty, my friend! You have endured my anxiety with wonderful courage. You have shown very great devotion to her and to me too, perhaps; but I have discovered several things; I know where she is: I learned yesterday from your son."

"Juliot saw her one day at the play; he hasn't forgotten her. He doesn't know her name, so he calls her the country client. He has often spoken to me about her: her sweetness and fascination impressed him."

"What then? Why, last Sunday the child went to the festival at Nanterre with a comrade of his own age, to whose parents you had entrusted him for that purpose."

"The two boys eluded the watchfulness of the parents for a few moments, and ran about the village. A tree heavily laden with fruit, hanging over a low wall, tempted their mischievous instincts. Juliot climbed on his comrade's shoulders and attacked the tree; and while he was filling his pockets, he saw a woman whom he recognized pass at his feet. I know the street, I made him describe the woman. I have been to Nanterre and made inquiries in the neighborhood: I have learned that a Madame d'Erlange—that is Julie under an assumed name—lived there with her maid, that she never went out, that no one was watching her, and that she lived alone from inclination; that she was not supposed to be ill, although your son thought she had changed. In a word, I know that she is a prisoner on parole, or that she is afraid of my importunities. Tell me the real reason, Marcel. If it is the latter, tell her to come back, to return to her house; tell her to have no fear; tell her that I swear by all that I hold most sacred that she shall never see me again. Do you understand, Marcel? Answer me and relieve me of the torture of uncertainty."

"Well, it is all true," said Marcel after a moment's hesitation. "Madame d'Estrelle is a prisoner on parole; but it is a parole which she herself gave, and which no one compels her to observe. She is at liberty to return; but she cannot see you any more."

"Very good, Marcel, that is enough. Carry her my oath of submission and bring her back to her own house. She is in dismal quarters now, and that solitude must be ghastly. Let her come back to her friends, her comforts, her liberty. Go instantly, go, I say! I don't wish her to suffer another moment for me."

"All right, all right, I will go," said Marcel. "I am going; but what about you?"

"As if it made any difference about me!" cried Julien. "What! haven't you gone?"

And he took Marcel by the shoulders, embraced him and pushed him out of the gate.

"Well," he said, with a smiling face, "everything is going better than I hoped: Madame d'Estrelle is not a prisoner! She will soon return."

He watched his mother closely as he spoke. She uttered a joyful exclamation, but a cloud passed over her brow at the same time. Julien sat down beside her and took both her hands.

"Tell me the truth," he said; "the marriage project worries you a little, doesn't it?"

"How can you think that I do not long most earnestly for anything that will make you happy? But I thought, that you no longer hoped."

"I was entirely resigned, and you said as I did: 'Let us not be discouraged, let us wait. Let us not think too much; perhaps she will forget, and in that case perhaps you would do well to forget also.'"

"And you answered: 'I will forget if necessary.' And now I see that you rely upon her more than ever."

"But don't you think that I have reason to rejoice. Tell me frankly if I am under an illusion, for you must try to preserve me from it."

"Ah! my child, what shall I say to you? She is an adorable creature, and I will adore her with you; but will she be happy with us?"

"You know that Monsieur Antoine proposes to deal almost as generously with her as with us, that he will leave her a competence. So that poverty, which terrified you so, is no longer to be dreaded. What is tormenting you now?"

"I have doubted it hitherto, my child. What can you expect? if I am unjust to her, it is the fault of you both. You had no confidence in me, I did not see clearly the birth of your love, I did not follow its different stages, and when you said to me one morning: 'We love each other to distraction,' it seemed to me too sudden to be very serious. It seemed to me that you hardly knew each other!—When I told your father that I loved him, he had been at work three years decorating our house, and I used to see him every day. Several good partis had been proposed to me, but I was very sure that I loved nobody but him. Julie stood in a different position with respect to you. No marriage appropriate to her condition and her ideas about love had ever been within her reach. She was consumed with a craving for love, and was mortally bored without admitting it. She saw you and esteemed you; you deserved it. You attracted her, as it was natural that you should. Peculiar circumstances brought you together, she thought that she loved you passionately. Has she made a mistake? The future will tell us; but she fled just at the moment when she said that she proposed to declare herself, she left you to wait and suffer without sending you a word of consolation. If I have doubted her, you must agree that appearances are against her!"

"Then you think that prejudice has more power over her than love? you think that she lied when she talked to me enthusiastically of the modest life she proposed to adopt, and told me how little she cared for honors and titles?"

"I do not say that, I say that she may have made a mistake concerning the strength of her attachment to you, and the reality of her distaste for society."

"So that if somebody should tell you that you had guessed right, you would not be surprised?"

"If your regret for her should be very great, my grief would be equally great, my poor child. If on the other hand you should bravely make the best of it, I should say that it was better so, and that you can surely find a more prudent and stronger-willed woman to love."

"Poor Julie!" said Julien to himself, "so her love for me was a mistake and a weakness even in my mother's eyes!—Well, set your mind at rest," he said aloud. "She renounces the dream we dreamed together; she no longer believes in it, she is afraid that I will remind her of it. All that you foresaw has proved to be true; Marcel has just told me so. I have given him my word that I will never see her again."

"Great Heaven!" exclaimed Madame Thierry in dismay, "how calmly you say that! Is it true that you are really so tranquil in your mind as this?"

"As you see. I was overwhelmed the first few days, and I did not conceal it from you to any great extent; but as time passed, I understood Madame d'Estrelle's silence. The tranquillity that you observe to-day is the result of two months of reflection. So don't be surprised at it, and believe that I am proud enough and sensible enough to overcome the pain I may have felt."

Julien's resolution was not feigned, he was perfectly honest in it. But he suffered too keenly to half confess his suffering. The better way was to refrain from any confession whatsoever.

In the evening, as it was very warm, Julien went out to take a bath in the river. Ordinarily he joined a number of young artists employed in the porcelain factory, whom he advised and instructed. But on this evening, feeling that he must be alone, he avoided them and went to a deserted spot on the outskirts of a piece of woodland. It was dull, lowering weather; Julien jumped into the water mechanically, and suddenly this thought came to his mind as he was swimming about:

"This is a terrible blow, from which I feel that I can never recover. If I should stop paddling here for a few moments, the water would swallow up my grief and keep the secret of my discouragement."

As he reflected thus, Julien ceased to swim and sank rapidly. He thought of his mother's despair, and when he touched bottom, he pushed himself up with his foot and returned to the surface. He was a good swimmer and could play with death thus without any risk; but the temptation was strong, and the thought of suicide produces a terrible vertigo. Three times he abandoned himself to the temptation, with increasing excitement, and three times he recovered himself, with decreasing resolution. As a fourth paroxysm, more violent than the others, was impending, Julien rushed ashore, afraid of himself, and threw himself on the sand, crying:

Tears did not relieve him. The tears of strong men are horrible cries and stifling sobs. He blushed to feel that he was so weak, and had to confess that he would be like that for a long while, perhaps forever. He returned home, dissatisfied with himself, and almost cursing the days of happiness he had enjoyed. He raged in his heart, and, wandering alone through the garden, while his mother slept, and the lightning constantly set the horizon on fire, he reproached his mother for loving him too well, and depriving him of liberty to dispose of himself.

"Why!" he exclaimed, "to live always for some other than oneself is downright slavery! I have no right to die! Why have I a mother? They who belong to no one are the happiest; they can, if they still love a broken life, hurl themselves into the dissipation which distracts the mind, into the debauchery which intoxicates. But I have not even that right! Nor have I the right to be depressed and ill. I must burn at a slow fire, smiling all the while; a tear is a crime. I cannot breathe heavily, dream, utter an exclamation in the night without my mother rushing to my side, terrified and ill herself. I cannot depart from my habits, go on a journey, seek oblivion and diversion in motion and fatigue; anything of that sort would worry her. To live without me would kill her. I must be a hero or a saint so that my mother may live! Happy are the orphans and abandoned children! they are not doomed to bear a burden beyond their strength!"

Julien had no sooner given vent to this revolt against destiny than other blasphemies entered his mind. Why had Julie disturbed his dream of self-sacrifice and virtue? Had he not accepted all the duties of his position? had he not performed those duties faithfully? By what right did that woman, because she was tired of solitude, take possession of his solitude? Was it not cowardly and blameworthy of her to give him a glimpse of the joys of heaven, although he neither hoped nor asked for anything, and then leave him to the humiliation of having believed in her?

"You have made me a miserable wretch!" he cried in the depths of his wrathful heart; "you are the cause that I no longer esteem myself, that I no longer love my art, that I curse my mother's love, that I no longer believe in my strength of will, and that I have felt the shameful and idiotic thirst for suicide. You deserve that I should revenge myself on you, that I should go to you among your friends and reproach you with the destruction of my beliefs, my peace of mind and my dignity. I will do it, I will say it to you, I will trample you under my feet!"

Then he thought of the future which Julie apparently had in mind for herself, and all the horrors of jealousy rose before him. He saw her in the arms of another, and he dreamed of the murder of his rival in every possible form.

He went out into the country and walked at random. He found himself once more on the shore of the stream. The storm broke and the lightning struck a tall tree not far from him. He darted in that direction, hoping that another bolt would strike him. He roamed about in torrents of rain, unheeding, and did not return until daybreak, ashamed to be seen in that state of insanity. He slept two hours and woke completely crushed, horribly frightened by what had taken place within him, and resolved not to allow himself to be taken by storm again by a violent passion of which he had not hitherto realized the extreme danger. He had much difficulty in rising; he breakfasted with his mother.

"I have always believed," he said to her, "that love, being the supreme blessing, should exalt us and sanctify us. I see now that love is the very acme of selfishness, and that it may make us bloodthirsty or idiotic. Love must be conquered; but love cannot be broken like a chain; it must be allowed to die out little by little."

Julien had a violent attack of fever and delirium; his mother divined his suffering, and she too cursed poor Julie in her heart.

"Never, my friend," she replied, with her heartrending sweetness; "I am very comfortable here, I live on my little income, I lack nothing, I am not unhappy, and unless you want to occupy this house——"

"This house is not mine; I deceived you about it; but you are at liberty to remain here, unless, out of regard for Julien, you will consent to what I ask."

"Julien knows where you are. He knows that you do not propose to see him again. He swears that he will not try to disobey you. He submits absolutely to a decision, of the reason for which he is ignorant. You have, therefore, no further cause for remaining in concealment."

"Ah! very well," said Julie, with a bewildered air; "but in that case—where shall I go?"

"Possibly; but you are supposed to own your hôtel temporarily. People suppose that you are engaged in arranging a settlement with Monsieur Antoine. You must show yourself, so that a mysteriously prolonged absence may not furnish food for slanderous suspicions."

"For Julien's sake you ought to be most careful of your reputation, which we have succeeded thus far in preserving intact."

"Julien knows perfectly well that I have nothing with which to reproach myself."

"It is because he knows it that he will fly at the throat of the first man who presumes to say a word against you."

"Let us go, then," said Julie, ringing for Camille. "I will do whatever you choose, my friend, provided that I need never see Monsieur Antoine again!"

"I should lie if I said that it was very well founded," replied Marcel, sadly; "but I cannot abandon it until the last extremity. Do not deprive me of the means of breaking down Monsieur Antoine's obstinacy."

"What is the use?" queried Julie. "Didn't you tell me that the marriage of a titled woman to a plebeian meant unhappiness, persecution and a horrible struggle for the plebeian?"

"Then you would have me ask your uncle to enrich the man I love? I must dishonor myself in my own eyes—in Julien's too, perhaps—to earn the forgiveness of a society without honor and without heart? You ask too much of me, Marcel; you abuse my utter prostration. May God give me strength to do but one thing,—resist you; for, after that disgrace, I should feel that I had delayed too long to die."

Poor Marcel was overdone with fatigue and disappointment. He wore himself out in words and efforts of every sort, and he succeeded only in rescuing all his friends from poverty and saving the material comforts of life for them. He could do nothing for their mental condition, and he said to his wife every night:

"My dear love, there is nothing falser than reality! I am moving heaven and earth to provide them with the means of living, and I succeed only in killing them by inches."

VIII

Julie returned to Paris. She found there her luxurious surroundings, her carriages, her jewels and her servants. Monsieur Antoine had looked after everything; nothing about her was changed. She paid no heed to anything. In vain did Marcel hope that she would experience a sort of satisfaction, even if it were only a matter of instinct, in returning to her ordinary surroundings. He was alarmed and almost vexed by that immovable indifference. He had notified those of her friends whom he was able to reach, in order to force her to be on her guard before them. She greeted them without warmth, and when they expressed concern at her pallor and her air of depression, she attributed everything to a cold she had taken on the journey, which had detained her in the country an unconscionably long time. It was nothing, she said. She had been much worse; she was better now. She had preferred not to write in order not to make her friends anxious. She promised to see her physician and to get well.

"I did you an ill turn," she said; "I am sorry, and I have come to ask you to forgive me."

"Yes, I know that you are either a great philosopher or a great saint; but you are a woman all the same, my friend; you have been persecuted and you are suffering!"

"Oh! mon Dieu! I know that the persecution by your creditors has lasted long enough for you to have become used to it, but it seems that the time came when you were within an ace of losing everything. They say that you obtained another respite, but with much difficulty, and with the certainty that it was merely falling back so as to jump higher. You told Madame Desmorges that, didn't you?"

"I have no desire to save anything that came from Monsieur d'Estrelle. It is my duty and my purpose to give up everything."

"Oh! in that case I see why you are so pale and so changed! I had understood that you displayed wonderful resignation, but that you were sick with anxiety. Now, my dear, you make a mistake in rejecting the consolations of your friends. It is a noble rôle that you are playing, but it will kill you! If I were in your place I would shriek and complain! That would not remedy anything, but it would relieve me. And then people would talk about it; society would be interested in me. It is always a comfort to attract attention; whereas you allow yourself to be buried alive without saying a word, and society, which is supremely selfish, forgets you. They were talking about you last night at the Duchesse de B——'s. 'That poor Madame d'Estrelle,' they said, 'you know she is really ruined? She won't have enough to hire a cab in which to pay her visits.'—'What!' said the Marquis de S——, 'we shall see such a pretty woman as she is splashed with mud like a spaniel! Impossible! it's sickening. Is she very miserable over it?'—'Why, no,' Madame Desmorges replied. 'She says that she will get along. She is an astonishing creature.' Thereupon they began to talk about something else. The moment that you show that you are brave, no one thinks of pitying you, especially as it's so convenient to think of no one but oneself."

"You have a smile that frightens me!" continued the baroness. "Do you know, my dear, I believe you are very ill? Oh! I don't believe in sparing people. If you do that, a person may neglect herself and die, or else drag along in misery and become ugly; and that is even worse than dying. Take care of yourself, Julie, don't abuse your health as you are doing. Your great courage won't carry you as far as you think, I tell you! Everyone knows that it is not possible to lose everything without a regret. Look you, I propose to tell you again, even though I make you angry, that you did very wrong not to marry that rich old fellow, and perhaps it is not too late to change your mind. No one would blame you now; when a woman no longer has anything——"

"Are you entrusted with new proposals from him?" queried Julie, with some bitterness.

"No, I haven't seen him since the day you and I fell out because of him. He has made several attempts to surprise me, but I had barricaded myself against his visits. But I don't say this to turn you against him. If he comes again, don't turn him away, and, if he marries you, be very sure that I will take it on myself to receive him on your account."

"Come, come! you are still distant and haughty with me. And yet I am your friend; I have proved it. I broke a lance for you not long ago. Some cowardly wretch of the Marquise d'Estrelle's set ventured to cast a slur on you because of a little painter; you know, the son of the famous Thierry, who lived at the end of your garden, by the way. I imposed silence on him; I said that a woman like you did not dishonor herself by being of a sociable disposition; and then, all of a sudden, I was seconded by Abbé de Nivières, who said: 'That young man doesn't even know her; he has gone to Sèvres to live with his mother. He is an excellent young man; he says that he never saw Madame d'Estrelle in all the time that he lived near her, and it is the truth.'—By the way, you are interested in those people, aren't you, the mother especially? Do you ever see her now?"

"Then I see that everything is all right, except your health, which disturbs me. Will you come to Chantilly with me? I am going to pass a month there; we shall see plenty of society, and perhaps it will set you up; then, if you recover your lovely coloring, perhaps we shall find a husband for you."

Madame d'Ancourt departed at last, chattering volubly, offering her services, and sympathizing with her friend to the very step of her carriage, abusing egotists, and in reality caring for nothing on earth but herself.

"She is too proud and too suspicious, that Julie," she said to herself. "Faith, I'll not go to see her again very soon! She is distressing. If she needs me, she will know where to find me."

It was almost the same story with all Madame d'Estrelle's acquaintances. She had never understood so well the abandonment which befalls all those who abandon themselves, and she abandoned herself the more completely in that she felt that her heart was becoming withered.

When she had passed several days without apparently giving any thought to the subject of her future action, she roused herself one morning to say to Marcel:

"I have done what you wished me to do; I have shown myself and explained my absence; I have said that I am to go away before long. It is time to have done with it and to turn over the house to Monsieur Antoine. It is my purpose to go to live in the provinces, in some lonely place where I shall be entirely forgotten. I shall take nobody but Camille. Do me the favor to advise me in the selection of an out-of-the-way place and a very modest dwelling."

"There is one great difficulty," said Marcel, "and that is that Monsieur Antoine will not assent to any settlement, that his receipt in full is in my wallet, and that he has not yet any idea that it has not been accepted."

"You took that receipt from him!" exclaimed Julie indignantly. "He believes that I will accept it! You had not the courage to tear it up and throw the pieces in his face! Oh! I beg your pardon, Marcel, I forget that he is your kinsman, that for your own sake you must treat him gently. Very well, give me the receipt, and bring Monsieur Antoine to me. This must be settled to-day; I will undertake to settle it."

"Take care, madame," said Marcel, in whose breast a faint hope revived, as he discovered the vulnerable point in Madame d'Estrelle, at which lightning-flashes of energy could still be produced. "Monsieur Antoine is very irritable too, his self-esteem is bent upon having you for his debtor. Do not so act with him that he will detest Julien."

"Yes, if all the conditions of the arrangement are observed; and I should lie if I told you that Monsieur Antoine is aware of your refusal to observe that one in which you are concerned."

"Oh! mon Dieu! what a position you have put me in, Marcel! With your blind devotion to practical affairs, with your obstinate determination to save me from poverty, you have degraded me! That man believes that I have sold my heart, that he has bought it with his money, and Julien also believes that I have betrayed love for wealth! Ah! you would have done better to kill me! To-day I feel that I cannot bear it all, and that I must die!"

Julie sobbed as if her heart would break; it was a long time since she had wept. Marcel preferred to see her so, rather than changed into a statue; he hoped for some favorable result from a violent paroxysm. He tried deliberately to cause it.

"That is true of course," replied Julie; "I do wrong to blame you for it. Forgive me, my friend. Are you perfectly sure that if I offend Monsieur Antoine by my refusal, everything that he has done for Julien will be in danger of being undone?"

"Indubitably, and Monsieur Antoine will be justified on equitable grounds. He is waiting, with an impatience which begins to alarm me, for you to proclaim his merits and cease to be ashamed of his benefactions. You must drink this cup, you must drink it for love of Julien, if, as I suppose, that love is not dead!"

"Let us not talk about that; I will drink the cup to the dregs. But how shall we explain to the world the generosity which I am forced to accept? What reason can we give for it? The world will suppose that I have fawned upon that old man, that I have bewitched him by degrading coquetries; perhaps they will say something worse."

"Yes, madame," said Marcel, determined to venture upon one supreme test to make sure of Julie's sentiments, "the evil-minded will say all that, and I do not as yet see any way to prevent their saying it. We will try to find a way; but if we cannot, will your devotion to Julien go so far as the sacrifice I ask?"

"Yes," said Madame d'Estrelle, "I will go on to the end! Tell me, is there not something to sign?"

"You have to enter into no new engagements," replied Marcel; "but you must consent to receive Monsieur Antoine and thank him. I am certain now that he would really make Julien a rich man if you would agree to a sort of reconciliation."

"Bring Monsieur Antoine here," said Julie.—"I will kill myself to-night," she said to herself when Marcel had gone.

Julie's love had made such progress in her despair that she was no longer capable of sound reasoning. Her love had become an accepted martyrdom; she lived wholly on the excitement of that martyrdom.

"Here is the key to the pavilion. Come at midnight; you will find me there. I am going on a long journey. I want to say adieu to you forever."

She put the key in the letter, sealed it, ordered the most reliable of her servants to mount and ride at full speed to Sèvres, and bring her a reply. It was five o'clock in the afternoon.

She went out into the garden to await Monsieur Antoine and stopped on the edge of the pond. The water was not very deep; but by lying down at full length!—One who wants to die can always find a way. The variety of suicide which had so tempted Julien a few days before, suggested itself to her with ghastly tranquillity.

"Nobody else on earth cares for me," she thought. "As I cannot be his, I will not be any man's. An infernal hatred has seized me by the throat and strangled me in the midst of my life and my happiness. They are not satisfied to deprive me of love and liberty, they seek to deprive me of honor too. Marcel himself said that I must consent to be reputed that old man's mistress. Ah! if Julien knew that, how he would abhor the comfort in which his mother is living! And if she should suspect it!—They shall both remain in ignorance of it, I am determined; my death will be the result of an accident. It will be impossible to retract the bargain we are about to make. Julien will be rich and honored. No one will ever guess at what price."

Once more the thought passed through Julie's mind that it was in her power and Julien's to shake off all these chains and to be united in spite of poverty.

"He would be happier so," she thought, "and perhaps I am sacrificing myself to his undoing! But who knows where Monsieur Antoine's hatred would stop? A raving maniac is capable of anything; perhaps he would have him murdered. Has he not secret agents, spies, cutthroats, in his service?"

Her brain was in a whirl, she walked round and round the basin as if she were impatiently awaiting the fatal hour. And then, when she thought that she was about to see Julien again, her heart returned to life with a mighty throb, and beat as if it would burst. She had no feeling of remorse, no scruple about breaking oaths extorted from her by the most revolting moral constraint.

"When one is at the point of death," she said to herself, "one has the right to protest before God against the iniquity of his executioners."

At that moment there was an extraordinary power of reaction in that woman, naturally so gentle and submissive. It was like the sudden boiling of a placid lake, caused by a volcanic disturbance, or like the blazing up of a flame just on the point of dying. She was feverish, she was no longer herself.

She saw Monsieur Antoine approaching with Marcel, and she mechanically seated herself, to receive him, on the bench where, three months earlier, the old man had made the strange and absurd proposition, her rejection of which had cost her so dear. As on that day, she heard the foliage rustle and saw the sparrow Julien had tamed flapping his wings and apparently hesitating whether he should light on her shoulder. The little creature had taken a liking to freedom. Julien, being unable to find him as they were going away, had left him behind, hoping that Julie, whose long absence he did not foresee, would be very glad to find him there. Since her return, Julie had seen him several times not far away, friendly but suspicious. She had tried in vain to induce him to come nearer. But this time he allowed himself to be caught. She was holding him in her hands when Monsieur Antoine accosted her.

She smiled and saluted him with a bewildered air; he spoke to her, unconscious of what he was saying, for his long exercise of absolutely despotic power had failed to overcome his timidity at the beginning of an interview. After his inevitable moment of stammering, he could succeed in saying nothing more than this:

"It is Julien's sparrow and I love it," replied Julie. "Here, do you want to kill it? Here it is!"

Her manner of speaking, her livid pallor, and the savagely indifferent air with which she offered him the poor little bird, all warm with her kisses, made a profound impression on Monsieur Antoine. He looked at Marcel as if to say: "Is she mad, I wonder?" and instead of twisting the sparrow's neck as he would have done three months earlier, he pushed it away, saying stupidly:

"You are so kind!" rejoined Julie, with the same feverish bitterness. "You have come to receive my thanks, haven't you? You know that I accept everything, that I am happy now, that I no longer love anything or anybody, that you have done me the very greatest service, and that you can say to God every night: 'I have been good and great like unto Thee!'"

Monsieur Antoine stood with his mouth open, uncertain whether Madame d'Estrelle said these things to make sport of him or to thank him; too cunning to trust, too dull to understand.

"She is going to fly in my face," he whispered to Marcel. "You deceived me, you rascal!"

"No, uncle," Marcel replied aloud. "Madame la comtesse is thanking you. She is very ill, as you see; do not ask her to make long speeches."

Marcel had relied on the impression that the alteration in Julie's features would probably produce on Monsieur Antoine. That impression was in truth profound. He stared at her with a dazed, cruel, yet terrified expression, and said to himself with a joy not unmingled with terror: "That is my work!"

"Madame," he said, after a moment's hesitation, "I said that I would be revenged on you, that I would force you to ask my pardon for your insults. Do you want to get through with it and admit that you were in the wrong? I ask nothing but that."

Antoine was sorely embarrassed to reply, and his anger, which had almost disappeared, reawoke, as always happened when he had no charge to make which would bear the test of common sense.

"Ah! so you don't think you have insulted me?" he said. "Very good, mordi! you shall ask my pardon in so many words if you don't want Julien to have to pay for you."

"Must I ask your pardon on my knees?" queried Julie, with a heartrending attempt at arrogance.

"Suppose that I should demand that?" retorted the old man, dizzy with anger when he felt that he was defied.

That was for her the last station on the road of martyrdom, the apology which the innocent victim was compelled to make, with the rope about the neck and the torch in the hand, before ascending the scaffold. At that moment of sublime self-immolation, her angered heart suddenly overflowed, her face became transfigured, she smiled the ecstatic smile of the saints, and the ineffable beauty of heaven revealed was reflected in her eyes.

Antoine did not understand, but he was dazzled. His anger subsided, not under the influence of emotion, but before a sort of superstitious terror.

Marcel said to Julie a few encouraging words, which she did not hear or did not try to understand; then he ran after Monsieur Antoine.

"Now, my excellent uncle," he said in the boldest and most stinging tone he had yet adopted with him, "you should be satisfied, indeed; you have killed Madame d'Estrelle!"

"Killed her?" said his uncle, turning abruptly upon him. "What infernal nonsense is that?"

"The nonsense would consist in taking her joy and her gratitude seriously, and you surely are not capable of that. That woman is in despair, she is dying of grief."

"You lie, you are dodging the question! She is still a little angry, she is sick on account of the way I have thwarted her lately; but in reality she is making the best of it, and while she may be chafing at her bit, she sees well enough that I am saving her in spite of her."

"You save her from the chances of the future, it is true, and you take the surest means to do it, by depriving her of life."

"Well, well, there's another dodge! She caught cold passing the nights in the garden with her lover! And then she was bored to death in that convent at Chaillot, and even more in that barrack at Nanterre, where she was absolutely alone! You see that it was no use for her to hide, I know every place she has been to. I never lost track of her. You can't fool me! I saw the convent doctor: he told me that she had a streak of melancholy in her disposition, but that she had no serious disease. I have seen her Paris doctor too; he says that he knows nothing about her sickness. If it was anything serious he'd know what it was, deuce take it! I know; she's angry; people don't die of that, and now she'll get better, I give you my word."

"And I," said Marcel, "give you my word that, with another week of the despair in which you are plunging her deeper and deeper, she will be lost beyond recall."

"Oho! so she loves that young dauber of canvas very dearly, does she? How about him, does he still think of her?"

"Julien's as badly off as she is, and in quite as alarming a frame of mind. I determined to make sure of it; I forced a confession from him with much difficulty, for he is not a man to complain. As for her, two whole months have passed and I haven't succeeded in extorting a word from her. To-day, I determined to force her to the wall; I succeeded, and now my mind is made up."

"I propose to destroy the two papers I have in my pocket; your receipt, which I have taken back from Madame d'Estrelle, and her promise never to see Julien again, which I have not yet delivered to you. You entrusted both of them to me, telling me to exchange your reciprocal pledges. I place you on your original footing by destroying them both. We must start afresh, and as I know your intentions and hers, I tell you now that Madame d'Estrelle will accept nothing from you, and that you can take possession of everything that belongs to her. Thus far she has followed my advice blindly; I have changed my views, and, as I have no desire to see her die, I advise her to retract her consent to everything."

"Why, you're a miserable knave!" said Monsieur Antoine, stopping short in the middle of the street and shouting at the top of his voice. "I don't know what keeps me from breaking my cane over your shoulders!"

"Knave indeed! when I give you back all your money and recover nothing for my client but the right to live in poverty! Nonsense! Just sue her and have the case aired in court, if you want to cover yourself with ridicule and shame!"

"But Julien! Julien, whom I have made rich, you scoundrel! This is what I foresaw! You have cheated me——

"Not at all, uncle! Julien has been seriously ill of late, he is still, and his mother said to me: 'Do whatever you choose. Let us return everything to Monsieur Antoine, and let Julie be restored to us!' So there you are, uncle. You don't lose an obolus, you recover principal and interest, and you leave us at liberty to live as we please, with no risk of losing our liberty by reason of any stipulation imposed by law or by private agreement."

"Why, you miserable villain, how you recant! I took you for a sensible man, you agreed with me entirely, you disapproved of their marriage, you worked with me to provide for their happiness——"

"True, until the day when I saw that happiness was taking them straight to the tomb."

"Yes, uncle, they are mad; love is a form of madness; but when it is incurable we must yield to it, and I yield."

"Very good!" retorted Monsieur Antoine, flattening his hat over his eyes with a vicious blow. "Go and tell that lady to get out of her house, that is to say my house, instantly. I will go to Sèvres and pack off the others. If the whole lot of them are not on the street in two hours, I'll send bailiffs, police agents—I'll set the houses on fire, I'll——"

His frantic threats became inaudible as he rushed madly away. He left Marcel in the street and returned home, unconsciously parodying Orestes pursued by the Furies. Marcel, undismayed, quietly followed him, and disregarded the orders already given to admit no one; he was determined to come to blows with the servants if necessary.

"That's as you choose," said Uncle Antoine, with lowering brow. "Have you notified Madame Julie to clear out of my house?"

"Yes, that is done," replied Marcel, for he saw that the old man had lost his head completely, and that he did not know how few were the minutes passed since their altercation in the street.

"She takes nothing," said Marcel; "she leaves everything for you. Are we going to Sèvres? Have you ordered the cab?"

He sat down on the edge of a table and seemed absorbed by his reflections. Marcel sat down opposite him, determined not to lose sight of him, at times fearing for his reason, at times dreading some diabolical suggestion of his wrath. When they entered the carriage, it was seven o'clock at night; Marcel broke the silence.

"There is no need of your going there," he said. "The documents are in my office; it is simply a matter of tearing them up, and I will not allow you to make an absurd scene at my aunt's, I warn you. She is exceedingly anxious, for Julien is very ill, as I told you."

As he spoke he pointed to a hired cabriolet which was just passing them. Julien, pale and downcast, with contracted brow and preoccupied, determined air, was in the vehicle, and passed close to them without seeing them. He had received Julie's note; he had forced himself to rise, and, as he wished to ask Marcel some questions before keeping the appointment, he was driving in season to Paris.

"If he is the one you want to speak to," said Marcel, "let us turn back; I will wager that he is going to see me!"

"He is not the one I want to speak to," rejoined Monsieur Antoine, satirically, "since he is dying."

The uncle relapsed into his sullen silence. They went on toward Sèvres. Did he himself know what he was going to do there? Let us confess the truth—he had absolutely no idea. He was conscious that his mind was in great confusion, and his meditation was simply a sort of painful uneasiness concerning the discomfort he felt.

"With all this," he thought, "I shall be the sickest of the three if I don't look out. Anger is an excellent thing; it keeps one alive, it helps out old age, and it is all up with an old man who allows himself to be led by the nose; but we shouldn't take too big a dose of it at once, and it would be well for me to cool off a little."

Thereupon, with a strength of will which would have made him a remarkable man if he had had better instincts or better guidance, he determined to take a nap, and slept quietly until the carriage entered the streets of Sèvres.

Marcel was strongly tempted to order the coachman to return to Paris without his uncle's knowledge; but would the man have obeyed? Moreover, as Julien was out of the way, would it not be well to find out how Monsieur Antoine proposed to act with regard to Madame Thierry? He stood greatly in awe of her. Would he dare to tell her to her face that he proposed to take back his gifts?

Sleep restored Monsieur Antoine to himself—that is to say to his chronic state of deliberate aversion, jealous self-love, and brooding resentment. They found Madame Thierry in front of a fine portrait of her husband, at which she was gazing earnestly as if seeking in the cheering serenity of that refined face the confidence in the future which had always sustained that fascinating man's happy temperament. Marcel had just time to hurry into the room first and say to her hastily:

"Monsieur Antoine is at my heels; he is in a rage. You can save everything by much patience and firmness."

"That you give back what he has given you, but that you thank him for it. Julie adores Julien. Everything depends on uncle. Here he is!"

"Yes, he insists upon it; but I will be close at hand, ready to interfere if necessary."

Marcel walked quickly into an adjoining cabinet, threw himself into a chair and waited. Monsieur Antoine entered Madame Thierry's salon by the other door. He was less timid when he did not feel Marcel's searching eye fixed upon him.

Madame Thierry rose, answered affirmatively, and courteously waved him to a chair.

Her face, too, was greatly changed. She had passed several nights by her son's bedside, and, when he insisted upon getting up and going away despite her entreaties, she realized that the momentous crisis of the drama of his life was at hand.

"If you will send your son to America, I will place a considerable sum of money in his hands, I will direct his operations, and in ten years he will return with thirty thousand francs a year."

"On condition that he says good-bye to a certain lady of our acquaintance, that's all."

"If he refuses—and that is what I expect, I have been warned—a certain agreement between him and me with regard to that lady is null and void."

"But you can resist; you weren't consulted about accepting my presents, you didn't know the conditions agreed upon between Madame d'Estrelle and me. There is ground for a lawsuit, and I might lose it by means of a little bad faith on the part of my opponents."

"If you regard my son and myself as your opponents, you may rest easy, monsieur; we renounce your benefactions, without a shadow of hesitation."

"As we did not know that they put fetters on a person who is dear to us, they did not make us blush; indeed—I may say, monsieur," added Madame Thierry, with a mighty effort due to her devotion to her son, "your name would have been blessed in this house, if we had been certain that we owed that generosity to your solicitude for our welfare. Whatever its cause, and brief as its duration has been, we have been happy, amid all our troubles and anxieties, to live in this house once more and to enjoy to the full our most cherished memories. You bid us leave them, and we obey; but it remains for me to thank you——"

"Yes, for me to thank you for the two months you have allowed me to pass here. The idea of never seeing the house again was very painful to me; it will be less so henceforth, and I shall look back to this brief stay here as to a last pleasant dream which will count for much in my life and for which I shall be indebted to you."

Madame Thierry spoke in a sweet voice and with a refined accent which had always made her very fascinating. In his moments of spleen Monsieur Antoine sourly called her the fine talker. He felt none the less the ascendancy of that still fresh voice, which caressed his ear with mild and almost respectful words. He had but little comprehension of sentimental refinement, but it seemed to him that he had found the submissive instinct of which he was so greedy.

"Come, Madame André," he said, with the surly manner he always assumed when his ill humor was beginning to retreat, "you know how to say all you want to say; but, in reality, you can't endure me, you may as well admit it!"

"I do not hate any one, monsieur; but you force me to confess that I am afraid of you."

Nothing could have been more adroit than that reply. To inspire fear was in Monsieur Antoine's opinion the noblest attribute of power. He softened as if by a miracle, and said in an almost good-humored tone:

Madame André had the penetration of women who have lived much in society, and the shrewdness of a mother pleading her child's cause. She saw what a long step forward she had taken; she forgot, and this time most opportunely, that she was sixty years old, and boldly decided to play the coquette, although it cost her more dearly to employ that ruse with Monsieur Antoine than with any other man.

"Brother," she said, "it rested entirely with you to retain my confidence. I do not reproach you for betraying it; your intentions were kind, but I misunderstood you. I was very young then, and in a plight where everything made me suspicious. I had had no experience of life. I thought that you were advising me to abandon André, whereas——"

"Yes, that is true; your action was dictated by affection for him. Well, you see, I was blind, obstinate, whatever you choose to call it; but confess that you ought to have forgiven me for that, have treated me like the child I was, and become my brother once more as in the past."

"You want me to admit that? Why, you always showed me the cold shoulder after that."

"It was your place to laugh at my coldness, and to take my hand and say: 'Sister, you're a little fool; let us embrace and forget the past.'"

"It is never too late to see what is right and to arrange things that are out of place."

"Yes, Monsieur Antoine, I do need you. My son is mad with grief; marry him to the woman he loves."

"We have been there all the time," replied Madame Thierry; "I have asked you for nothing since you have been here except liberty of action for Madame d'Estrelle."

"No, no money, nothing! the sacrifice is made. Let us remain here as tenants, we will gladly pay for the privilege. And, if you are not willing—why, your will shall be done; but turn us away without hatred and forgive us for being happy, for we shall be, even in poverty, if our hearts are content with one another, if we can say to one another that our happiness is no longer a source of affliction to you."

Monsieur Antoine felt that he was beaten; he was ashamed of it and clung to the last straw.

"That is your pride," he said; "it's always the same thing however you change it! The rich man's money is the object of your scorn! You snap your fingers at it!—'Take it all back, we want nothing, we haven't any needs! we live on air! What is this money? No better than pebbles to sensible minds!' And yet, my fine lady, money honestly earned by a man who had nothing on his side but his natural genius, ought to count for something! It's the working-bee's honey, it's the tropical flower which is made to bloom in an artificial climate by the patience and skill of a master gardener. Ah! that is nothing, you think? With all his wit, my poor brother only succeeded in using up the money he earned by working like a hod-carrier. But I know how to make a different use of money; I save it, I add to it every day, and I make people happy when I choose!"

"What are you driving at, Monsieur Antoine?" said Madame Thierry, as she saw Marcel making unintelligible signs to her through the door behind Monsieur Antoine.

"I am driving at this, that you are not so good a mother as you think. You are willing to sacrifice everything to your son except your contempt for the money that comes from me. In heaven's name, do you think I stole it, does my gold stink?"

"But why, in heaven's name, do you say such things to me? why do you suppose that I refuse you the esteem you deserve?"

"Because, if you were a good mother, instead of talking this sort of nonsense to me, you would say: 'Brother, we are unfortunate and you are rich; you can save us. We are a little out of our heads, we want to pay court to Madame d'Estrelle, but that is no reason for leaving us without bread. Come, forgive us for everything at once! indulge us with love and with bread to eat; it is humiliating to us, but no matter! We know that you are a noble-hearted and generous man; you will have pity on us and grant us all we ask!'—Yes, Madame André, that is what you would say, what you would ask on your knees, if, instead of being a great lady, you were really a good mother!"

Madame Thierry was speechless with surprise. She looked at Marcel, who, unseen by Monsieur Antoine, urged her by most energetic pantomime to yield to the old fellow's whim. The poor woman had a sinking at the heart, but she did not hesitate; she slipped from the chair to her hassock, on which she knelt, and said, taking both Monsieur Antoine's hands:

"You are right, brother, you teach me my duty. I surrender. Be the noblest of men, forgive everything and grant everything."

"At last! Good!" cried Monsieur Antoine, rising; "and when people are reconciled, they embrace, don't they?"

"Well," said the horticulturist, "you're a great fool, aren't you, master pettifogger? It was very pretty, your scheme of rebellion! to smash and break everything! What! reduce your client and your family to want, all rather than give way to the rich man, the powerful man, the natural enemy of those who have nothing and don't know how to earn anything! A fine solicitor, on my word, who can't obtain anything for his clients but love and rye bread! Luckily women are brighter than that! Here are two who sent me to the devil, and both of them have bent the knee to me to-night. Well, it is done, madame my sister! I shall never remind you of this, for I am generous, and when people do what I want I know how to reward them. Your son shall marry the fair countess, whom I must turn out of her house because of what the world may say; but the hôtel D'Estrelle with twenty-five thousand francs a year, shall be Julien's marriage portion. That's the way I do things, and I know that you will thank me for it to-morrow in earnest; for I am not deceived by the politics of the present day; but you have done what I wanted, you have submitted, I asked nothing but that."

"You shall have more than that," said Madame Thierry, "you shall have the affection of warm and sincere hearts, and you shall know such happiness as you might have known long ago; but we will do all we can to make up for lost time."

"That is mere talk," said Monsieur Antoine. "Happiness is being one's own master, and I don't need anybody to be mine. I don't like brats and mawkish sentiment; I wasn't made to be the father of a family, but I could have governed a country very well, if I had been born a king. It has always been my whim to command, and I reign over whatever is within my reach much better than many monarchs who don't know what they are doing!"

Despite the anxiety which Julien's absence caused her, and her longing to send Marcel after him, Madame Thierry felt called upon to invite Monsieur Antoine to supper.

"Oh!" said he, "I sup on a hard crust of bread and a glass of cheap wine. That is my habit: I have never cared much about eating."

"I am sure that Julien is at my house waiting for me," he said to his aunt. "He must be impatient because I do not return; but my wife is there, and she will keep him quiet; Juliot will chatter to him, and if he should be sicker, you may be sure that he is well taken care of."

Julien was frantically impatient in very truth, despite the attentions which Madame Marcel lavished upon him. He had felt exceedingly weak when he arrived. He had tried to eat a little and to divert his thoughts with his godson's pretty prattle; but, as Marcel did not appear, when he heard the clock strike eleven, he could stand it no longer. He declared that his mother would be anxious if he had not returned at midnight; he promised to take a cab to return to Sèvres, and started for Rue de Babylone on foot, with many detours and precautions, to avoid being watched and followed, as formerly, by some agent of Monsieur Antoine. He arrived unmolested. His actions were no longer watched. Monsieur Antoine had been spying upon Julie too long not to be sure that she no longer had any relations with Julien.

At midnight, Julien, who had been at the door fifteen minutes, entered and found Julie, who also had been waiting fifteen minutes in the pavilion. At the same moment Marcel, Monsieur Antoine, and Madame Thierry entered Paris by the Barrière de Sèvres. Monsieur Antoine's frugal supper and slow conversation had lasted a little too long to suit the widow. Being anxious about her son, she had asked for a seat in the chaise, that she might join Julien at Marcel's.

As the moment for his meeting with Julie drew near, Julien had summoned all his courage. He anticipated a painful explanation, he had taken an inward oath that he would be neither angry nor reproachful nor weak, and yet, when he opened the door, his hand trembled, a giddiness born of frenzy and despair made him hesitate and recoil; but, the instant that she saw him, Julie uttered a joyful cry, threw her arms about his neck, and strained him passionately to her heart. They were in the dark, they could not see how changed they both were. They felt that their kisses were burning, and it did not occur to either of them that it might be with fever. At that moment the only fever was that fever of love which gives life. They had forgotten that which causes death.

But that moment of intoxication did not long endure in Julien's case. More alarmed than exhilarated by Julie's caresses, he hastily pushed her away.

"I don't know what I wrote, I was mad; but there can be no eternal farewell, it is not possible when two people love as we do."

Amid the transports of love, Julien was again seized with terror. Julie unguardedly uttered excited words in which there was an indefinably ominous implication which made his blood run cold.

"Ah!" he exclaimed abruptly, "you are deceiving me! You are going away forever, or else you think that you are going to die! You are ill, I know; given up by the doctors it may be?"

"I want to see your face; I can't see you here, let us go out. I am afraid! It seems to me at times that I am dreaming, and that it is your ghost that I hold in my arms."

"I can't see you, mon Dieu! I can't see your face," said Julien, anxiously. "I can feel that your arms are thinner, that your waist is smaller. You seem to have become so light that your feet do not touch the gravel. Tell me, are you a dream? Am I here, by your side, in this garden where we have been so happy? I am afraid I am mad!"

They drew near to the basin: there, as the moonless sky was without a cloud and was reflected in the water with all its stars, Julien saw that Madame d'Estrelle was pale, and the whiteness of the water, reflected on her face, made her appear even more ghastly than she was. He could tell that her face had grown thin by the increased size of her eyes, which shone brightly in the darkness.

"I was sure of it!" he cried; "you are dying, and that is why you sent for me. Very good; Julie, I will not leave you again; if I am to lose you, I propose to receive your last breath and then die myself."

"Why, my mother will die with us; what do you expect me to say to you? She would have liked to die on the day she lost my father; she said so unconsciously in her first frenzy; and since then, I have fully realized that she has lived only for me. We will all three go together, since we have but one soul between us, and we will go to a world where the purest love will not be a crime. There must be such a world for those who have never been able to understand the wicked prejudices of this one. Let us die, Julie, without remorse or vain regret. Give me your breath, give me your fever, give me your sickness; I swear that I will not survive you!"

"Alas!" said Julie, unable to restrain that outcry of nature; "I might have been cured!"

"What do you mean?" cried Julien, beside himself. "Have you taken poison? Answer, tell me! I insist upon knowing!"

"No, no, I have not!" she replied, dragging him away with a sudden, desperate movement which made a profound impression on him.

She had been leaning over the water, she had seen therein the reflection of her face and her white dress; she had remembered that, an hour later, she must be lying there motionless, dead; she had sworn it. That was the price of her broken oath, that was the price of Julien's happiness; a ghastly fear of death had made her shudder and start back.

"What are you afraid of?" he asked her; "what did you see in the water? what were you thinking about? what made you fly? Ah! I can guess, you intend to die soon, immediately, as soon as I have gone! But I say that it shall not be; you are my wife. Since you still love me, you belong to me; I don't know what oath you have taken, I don't know what constraint has been put upon you; but I, your lover, your husband, your master, release you from everything! I will carry you off by force; no, I will take you with me, that is my right. I do not propose that you shall die, and I propose that my mother shall live to bless you. I have strength for us both; I don't know what sort of a battle I shall have to fight, but I will fight it. Come, let us go! If you haven't strength to walk, I have strength to carry you. Come, I insist! the time has come for you to acknowledge no other power over your life than mine."

As, while leading her back to the pavilion, he led her in the direction of the basin, the combat between remorse and love in her heart became so violent that she uttered a cry of horror, and, clinging to him with all her strength, she said:

"I pledged my word of honor to leave you, and I am breaking my pledge and reducing your mother to want! Can you relieve me from that burden?"

"You are mad!" said Julien; "was my mother so very poor when you first knew her? will my right arm be cut off to keep me from working? Very well, then I will work with my left arm! Ah! I understand everything now. This is the revenge threatened by Monsieur Antoine; I ought to have guessed sooner why our father's house was given back to us. Poor Julie! you were sacrificing yourself for us; but that is all null and void; I have not consented; I have accepted nothing. I submitted, knowing nothing about it. Come, do not tremble any more, I release you from your promise, and woe to the man who dares to remind you of it! If you hesitate, if you shrink from anything, I shall believe that wealth is what you regret, and that you have less courage and love than I!"

"Ah! that is the suspicion I dreaded so!" said Julie. "Let us go, let us go!—but where shall we go? How shall I dare appear before your mother and say: 'I bring you sorrow and ruin?'"

"Let us go!" she repeated, "let us go to her, and let her decide my fate. Take me, take me away from here!"

Julie was completely crushed by such a multitude of emotions; her strength failed her, and Julien, as he caught her in his arms, saw that she had fainted. It was impossible to do anything for her in the pavilion, so he carried her to her apartment, the garden door being open, and the room lighted. He deposited Julie on a sofa, and she speedily recovered consciousness; but when she attempted to rise, she fell back.

"Ah! my dear," she said, "I cannot stand. Am I going to die here? Is it too late for you to save me? Hark: someone is knocking on the street door, I think."

But, as he strove to restore her confidence while his own was beginning to disappear, they were startled by a loud peal of the bell.

"They are coming after me, to carry me away, perhaps!" cried Julie, wildly, "to put me in a convent!—The marchioness, Monsieur Antoine, I don't know who!—And I cannot fly! Take me away, hide me, Julien!"

"Wait, wait," said Julien, who had opened an inner door and was listening; "it is Marcel, calling Camille. Yes, it is some urgent matter. Admit him yourself!"

"Very well, I will go," said Julien, resolutely. "He must see me here in any event, as I do not propose to leave this house without you."

He hurried to the door of the vestibule, where Marcel was ringing as if he would pull the house down; and before any servant had time to rise and find out what the matter was, Julien opened the door to Marcel and Madame Thierry. He admitted them and locked the doors behind them.

"Ah! my child," cried Madame Thierry, "I was very sure that I should find you here! Victory, Julien, my poor Julien! Ah! I don't know what I am saying; you will be cured at once, we bring you happiness!"

When Julie learned what had happened at Sèvres, life returned to her as it returns to a half-dead plant when the rain falls upon it. Her tense nerves were relaxed by tears of joy. As for Julien, who was almost dangerously ill the day before, he was cured like those paralytics whom a beneficent thunderclap causes to walk and leap about.

After an hour passed in an outpouring of emotion which seemed inexhaustible, Marcel took Madame Thierry home with him to obtain a little rest, and entrusted Julie to the care of Camille, who undertook to keep the servants quiet concerning that nocturnal visit. Julien had already made his escape through the pavilion. Julie slept as she had not slept for a long while.

Luckily, as we have said, Monsieur Antoine no longer kept spies about the hôtel D'Estrelle, and, luckily too, the servants were discreet and devoted to their mistress; for if the rich man had learned of that interview, he might have been made dangerously angry and have changed his mind. He had expressed a desire to inform Madame d'Estrelle of her pardon with his own lips; but he too was tired, relaxed, satisfied, proud of himself; he slept soundly and rose a quarter of an hour later than usual. He was no sooner on his feet than he redoubled his ordinary activity and put his whole household in deadly fear; for he was sharp to command, quick to threaten, and even quicker to raise his hand, armed with a cane, against the sluggish. The old hôtel De Melcy was thrown open, swept and put in order in the twinkling of an eye. Messengers were despatched in all directions, and at noon a sumptuous dinner was served. The guests, assembled in the large gilded salon, anticipated some mysterious event. Marcel brought Madame Thierry and Madame d'Estrelle, whom he had invited in the master's behalf. Julien too had been notified, and arrived in due season. Julie was received by Madame d'Ancourt, Madame Desmorges, her daughter, and her son-in-law. The Duc de Quesnoy had not returned; but Abbé de Nivières was there, determined to eat for two. Madame la présidente did not keep them waiting, and Marcel was commissioned to present to the ladies a collection of botanists, learned professors and collectors, whom Monsieur Antoine was wont to convoke on great occasions.

"It is enough to make one die laughing," said the baroness to Julie, leading her unto a window recess. "The goodman sent a messenger to me at six o'clock this morning, to invite me to witness the christening of a rare plant which is to bear his name! You can imagine what a pleasant awakening it was! I was furious! but I discovered in a postscript that you were to attend the ceremony, and I decided that I would come. So you are reconciled to your old neighbor, are you, my dear? Well, so much the better; you have followed my advice and you will come to it at last, I tell you! The gardener isn't attractive; but five millions! remember that!"

Julie's other friends thought differently. They supposed that Antoine had made an amicable arrangement with her which was satisfactory to them both, and that they ought to accept his invitation, in order to do their friend a service. They questioned Julie with that theory in mind, and Julie did not undeceive them.

As for the professors, the ostentatious christening of a new plant did not seem particularly absurd to them. Monsieur Thierry had enriched horticulture with several interesting specimens. He had fostered the acclimatization of useful trees, and his name well deserved to figure in the annals of science. A good dinner on such an occasion does no harm, and the presence of a number of attractive women is not absolutely inconsistent with the solemn preoccupations of botany.

When everybody had arrived, Monsieur Antoine assumed a modest and good-humored air, a rare but certain symptom of inward triumph unmingled with suspicion. He placed everybody round a large table, in the centre of which an object of considerable height was concealed under a great bell of white paper. Then he took from his pocket a treatise in manuscript, luckily very short, but which it was difficult to listen to without laughing, for in it French and Latin were murdered with the utmost coolness. That manuscript of his own composition, which began with messieurs et mesdames, and which treated of the importation and cultivation of the most beautiful lilies known, concluded thus: "Having had what I consider the advantage of buying, raising and bringing to perfect bloom the only specimens in France of a lily which exceeds in size, in fragrance and in splendor all varieties above-mentioned, I call the attention of the honorable company to my individual, and invite them to give it a name."

Having concluded the reading of his speech, Monsieur Antoine deftly raised, with the end of a reed, the white paper covering, and Julien uttered a cry of surprise when he saw the Antonia Thierrii perfectly fresh and blooming in all its glory. He believed at first that there had been some trickery—that it was a perfect artificial imitation; but the plant, when the covering was removed, gave forth a perfume which recalled to his mind, and Julie's as well, the first day of their passion; and when the clamor due to sincere or courteous admiration had made the circuit of the table, Monsieur Antoine added:

"Messieurs les savants, you must know that this plant put forth two shoots, the first one late in May, a very pretty specimen, accidentally broken, and preserved in a herbarium close by; the second in August, twice as large and full as the other. It blossomed, as you see, the tenth day of said month."

"Christen, christen!" cried Madame d'Ancourt. "I would like to stand godmother to that lovely lily, but I fancy that another——"

She glanced at Julie with a mixture of irony and goodwill. The professors paid no heed, but unanimously proclaimed the name of Antonia Thierrii.

"You are very kind, messieurs," said Monsieur Antoine, flushing with pleasure and stammering with emotion, "but I have a slight modification to suggest to you. It is no more than fair that this plant should bear my name, but I should like to prefix the name of a person who—of a lady who—in short, I ask to have it called the Julia-Antonia Thierrii."

THE CHRISTENING OF THE LILY

"Julia-Antonia Thierrii it is," replied the professors artlessly.

"Ah! at last! bravo! so it's decided!" cried the Baronne d'Ancourt, pointing to Julie, and making the sign indicating union with her plump white hands.

Every eye was turned upon Julie, who blushed, and thereby recovered all the splendor of her beauty.

"Excuse me, madame la baronne," said Uncle Antoine, with a sly expression. "I tricked you by going to your house to beg you to make an offer of marriage to Madame d'Estrelle in my behalf. I wanted to see what you would say, and you didn't say no; on the contrary, you advised that young lady to accept me. That was what led me to propose to her the man I had in view for her, for I said to myself: 'If an old fellow like me is eligible because of his money, my nephew, who is young and will have a good share of my money, may be accepted.'—That is how it happens, mesdames and messieurs, that, with the consent of Madame d'Estrelle, I concluded to-day the business troubles we have had by a marriage between her and my nephew Julien Thierry, whom I do myself the honor to present to you."

"Psha! the young painter?" cried Madame d'Ancourt, irritated, she knew not why, by Julien's beauty and impassioned manner.

"A painter?" said the bewildered Madame Desmorges. "Ah! my dear, so it was true after all, was it?"

"Yes, my friends, it was true," replied Julie, boldly; "we loved each other before we knew that Monsieur Antoine would rescue us from the poverty that threatened us both."

"I declare that Monsieur Antoine is a great man and a true philosopher!" cried Abbé de Nivières. "Suppose we adjourn to the table?"

"Let us go to dinner, mesdames and messieurs," said Monsieur Antoine, offering Julie his hand. "You will say it is a misalliance, but three millions for each of my nephews, that helps to rub the dirt off a family, and my grandnephews will have money to purchase titles with."

This last argument changed the blame of Julie's friends into somewhat reluctant congratulations. She had to resign herself to the necessity of appearing to sacrifice vainglory to wealth; but what did it matter to her after all? Julien knew what to think.

Julie, who was still in mourning for her father-in-law, went to Sèvres to pass the rest of the summer. Sèvres is a Norman oasis within two leagues of Paris. The apple-trees give it a rural savor, and the hills, covered with lovely rustic gardens, were at that time quite as charming and more unconventional than to-day. I must not, however, speak slightingly of the lovely villas of Sèvres as it now is, with their magnificent shade trees and the picturesque inequalities of the region through which the river boldly cuts its way. The railroad has not altogether dispelled the poesy of that wooded spot, and it is not unpleasant to be able to reach, in a quarter of an hour, the grass-grown paths and fields sloping to the water's edge. From the top of the hill one can distinguish Paris, an imposing silhouette against the blue sky, through the clumps of trees in the foreground; three steps away, in the bottom of the ravine, one can lose sight of the great city, turn away from the too white villas, and lose oneself in the genuine country, still unspoiled, although a bit rococo, and always lovely with flowers.

There Julie recovered her health, which was seriously impaired for some time, and before as after their marriage, Julien was all in all to her, as she was all in all to him. What society said and thought of their union, they did not care to know. Their real friends sufficed for them, and Madame Thierry was the happiest of mothers. Their happiness was disturbed, it is true, by the political tempests, the approach of which Julien had watched with no idea that they would be so swift and so radical. Having a clear conscience and a generous heart, he made himself very useful in his neighborhood by the pains which he took to relieve want, and to prevent it, so far as he could, from urging its victims on to deplorable acts of violence. For a long time he exerted great influence over the workmen in the factory at Sèvres, and in the faubourg which surrounded the hôtel D'Estrelle. On some days he was well-nigh overwhelmed; but nothing could induce him to do anything which his conscience disapproved, and he was threatened in his turn and was very near being suspected. The firmness with which he faced suspicion, the generous personal sacrifices he had made, the confidence he displayed in the midst of danger, saved him. Julie was as brave as he. The timid woman was transformed; she felt that her soul had developed and been tempered anew in its fusion, brought about by love, with a fearless and upright soul. Her heart was torn, doubtless, when several of her old friends were struck down by the Revolution, despite all Julien's efforts to rescue them. She succeeded in saving some of them by judicious advice and prudent measures. She concealed two in her own house; but she was unable to save the Baronne d'Ancourt, who ruined herself by her excessive fright and underwent a most rigorous captivity. The unfortunate Marquise d'Estrelle could not restrain her rage when the forced loans encroached on her savings. She died on the scaffold. The Duc de Quesnoy emigrated. Abbé de Nivières prudently turned Jacobin.

After the Terror, the suppression of the privilege attached to the royal establishments having enabled Julien to gratify a wish he had often formed, he labored to disseminate the industrial and artistic improvements which he had had leisure to study and to experiment upon at Sèvres. He earned no money by it; that was not his object; in fact he lost something; but he found therein the means of ameliorating the lives of many unfortunates. He was not rich, and his wife was overjoyed to see him continue his artistic work and devote himself lovingly to the education of his children.

Marcel purchased a cottage near theirs at Sèvres, and the two families passed together all the holidays and days of rest which the worthy solicitor was able to steal from his business. He made a little fortune by honorable methods, and Julien was able to manage his own competence with the prudence his father had lacked. Well for him that it was so, for the Revolutionary government confiscated Monsieur Antoine's property. The old man had continued to live alone, feeling no desire for family life, as gracious as it was in his power to be to the debtors whose gratitude flattered his pride, but unwilling to enter into any social relations which would have upset his habits. He had promised Marcel to think no more about marriage, and he kept his word; but he was attacked by another mania. He became, in politics, a reviler of all the events of the Revolution, whatever they might be. Everybody was mad, blundering, stupid. The king was too weak, the people too gentle, the guillotine too lazy and too greedy by turns. And then as that succession of tragedies disturbed his brain, which was more mad than cruel, he changed his opinions and passed from the most unbridled sansculottism to the most laughable dandyism. All this was quite harmless, for he did not intrigue for place, but contented himself with breaking out in words in his rare incursions into society; but he was denounced by workmen whom he had maltreated, and came near paying with his head for his riotous indulgence in obscure eloquence.

Julien and Marcel, by tireless persistence, succeeded in inducing him to leave the hôtel De Melcy, where he defied the storm every day. They kept him out of sight at Sèvres, where he made them very unhappy by his evil humor, and compromised them more than once by his imprudent acts. His property was under sequestration, and he recovered only a few shreds. He endured that terrible blow with much philosophy. He was one of those pilots who curse during the tempest, but keep cool when it is a question of salvage. He refused to take back any part of what Julien had received from him. As his garden had not been injured and he recovered it almost intact, he resumed his former habits and recovered comparative good humor. He lived there until 1802, still active and robust. One day they found him sitting perfectly still on a bench in the sunshine, his watering pot half full beside him, and on his knees an undecipherable manuscript, the last lucubration of his wornout brain. He had died without warning. The night before he had said to Marcel:

"Never fear, you shall have the millions you expected to inherit from me! Let me live only about ten years, and I shall make a larger fortune than I ever had. I have a scheme for a constitution which will save France from ruin; after that I will think a little of myself and go back to my exporting business."

NOVELS

BY

GEORGE SAND

VOLUME XIII

ANTONIA

THE JEFFERSON PRESS

BOSTON, NEW YORK

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ANTONIA

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

NOVELS BY GEORGE SAND

VOLUME XIII

ANTONIA

THE JEFFERSON PRESS

BOSTON, NEW YORK

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ANTONIA

NOVELS

BY

GEORGE SAND