erstand you; permit me, however, to return
confidence for confidence. I never knew two human beings who so much
deserved to be happy, and were so calculated to render each other so,
as you and your husband, and yet you are estranged from each other. I
shall certainly believe I have lived long enough, and have accomplished
enough, if I can unite you more affectionately to each other, and
attach your now divided hearts."

"You are very kind; but though half your wish is already
accomplished--for my heart has long been pursuing his, which flies from
me--I fear that you attempt an impossibility. However, if any one
could succeed in this, you are that one. You, Alamontade, are the
first to whom Bertollon has quite attached himself,--to whom he firmly
clings. Try it; change the disposition of the man."

"You are joking; I change him? What other virtue do you wish Bertollon
to practise? He is generous, modest, the protector of innocence, of an
unvarying temper, without predominant passions, disinterested, kind."

"You are right, he is all that."

"And how shall I change him?"

"Make him a better man."

"A better man?" replied I, astonished, stopping and looking with
embarrassment into the eyes of this beautiful woman, which were filled
with tears. "Is he, then, bad? Is he vicious?"

"That he is not," she said; "but he is not good."

"And yet, madame, you allow that he possesses all the noble qualities
for which I just now praised him? Do you not, perhaps, demand too much
from a mortal?"

"I do not deny that he possesses what you have praised in him,
Alamontade; but he does not use those qualities as virtues, only as
instruments. He does much good, not because it is good, but because it
is advantageous to him. He is not virtuous, but prudent. In every
action he only looks at the useful and injurious, never at the good and
evil. He would as soon employ hell for accomplishing his designs as
heaven. His happiness consists in the attainment of his desires, and
for this he is and does what suits his purpose under any given
circumstances. The world is to him the field of desire, wherein all
belongs to the most fortunate and cunning. The throng of men living
together created, in his opinion, states and laws, religions and
usages. The wisest man in his eyes is he who knows the entangled
tissue of circumstances to its finest threads; and he who knows that
can do any thing. Nothing is in itself right or wron