r marquise, punish me not with reproaches, I implore you."

"Reproaches! Have I a right to make you any?"

"No, unfortunately, no; but tell me, you, who during a year I have loved
without return or hope----"

"You are mistaken--without hope it is true, but not without return."

"What! for me, of my love! there is but one proof, and that proof I
still want."

"I am here to bring it, monsieur."

Fouquet wished to clasp her in his arms, but she disengaged herself with
a gesture.

"You persist in deceiving yourself, monsieur, and never will accept of
me the only thing I am willing to give you--devotion."

"Ah, then, you do not love me? Devotion is but a virtue, love is a
passion."

"Listen to me, I implore you: I should not have come hither without a
serious motive: you are well assured of that, are you not?"

"The motive is of very little consequence, so that you are but here--so
that I see you--so that I speak to you!"

"You are right; the principal thing is that I am here without any one
having seen me, and that I can speak to you."--Fouquet sank on his knees
before her. "Speak! speak, madame!" said he, "I listen to you."

The marquise looked at Fouquet, on his knees at her feet, and there
was in the looks of the woman a strange mixture of love and melancholy.
"Oh!" at length murmured she, "would that I were she who has the right
of seeing you every minute, of speaking to you every instant! would
that I were she who might watch over you, she who would have no need of
mysterious springs, to summon and cause to appear, like a sylph, the man
she loves, to look at him for an hour, and then see him disappear in the
darkness of a mystery, still more strange at his going out than at his
coming in. Oh! that would be to live a happy woman!"

"Do you happen, marquise," said Fouquet, smiling, "to be speaking of my
wife?"

"Yes, certainly, of her I spoke."

"Well, you need not envy her lot, marquise; of all the women with whom
I have any relations, Madame Fouquet is the one I see the least of, and
who has the least intercourse with me."

"At least, monsieur, she is not reduced to place, as I have done, her
hand upon the ornament of a glass to call you to her; at least you do
not reply to her by the mysterious, alarming sound of a bell, the spring
of which comes from I don't know where; at least you have not forbidden
her to endeavor to discover the secret of these communications under
pain of breaking off forever