alked with him of books
and the theatres.

When her mourning kept her at home, M. de Camors passed the two first
evenings with her until ten o'clock. But this effort fatigued him, and
the poor young woman, who had already erected an edifice for the future
on this frail basis, had the mortification of observing that on the
third evening he had resumed his bachelor habits.

This was a great blow to her, and her sadness became greater than it
had been up to that time; so much so in fact, that solitude was almost
unbearable. She had hardly been long enough in Paris to form intimacies.
Madame Jaubert came to her friend as often as she could; but in the
intervals the Countess adopted the habit of retaining Vautrot, or even
of sending for him. Camors himself, three fourths of the time, would
bring him in before going out in the evening.

"I bring you Vautrot, my dear," he would say, "and Shakespeare. You can
read him together."

Vautrot read well; and though his heavy declamatory style frequently
annoyed the Countess, she thus managed to kill many a long evening,
while waiting the expected visit of Madame de Tecle. But Vautrot,
whenever he looked at her, wore such a sympathetic air and seemed so
mortified when she did not invite him to stay, that, even when wearied
of him, she frequently did so.

About the end of the month of April, M. Vautrot was alone with the
Countess de Camors about ten o'clock in the evening. They were reading
Goethe's Faust, which she had never before heard. This reading seemed to
interest the young woman more than usual, and with her eyes fixed on
the reader, she listened to it with rapt attention. She was not alone
fascinated by the work, but--as is frequently the case-she traced her
own thoughts and her own history in the fiction of the poet.

We all know with what strange clairvoyance a mind possessed with a fixed
idea discovers resemblances and allusions in accidental description.
Madame de Camors perceived without doubt some remote connection between
her husband and Faust--between herself and Marguerite; for she could not
help showing that she was strangely agitated. She could not restrain
the violence of her emotion, when Marguerite in prison cries out, in her
agony and madness:

Marguerite.

Who has given you, headsman, this power over me? You come to me while it
is yet midnight. Be merciful and let me live.

Is not to-morrow morning soon enough?

I am yet so young--s