hope
of pleasing me; and even when narrating the story of Margot's fall,--for
such he called it,---I saw him watching the impression it produced upon
me, and canvassing, as it were, the chances that here at length might
possibly be found the long-wished-for means of obtaining influence over
me.

"I do not ask of you," said he, as he concluded, "to see all these
things as I see them. You knew them in their days of poverty and
downfall; you have seen them the inhabitants of an humble village,
leading a life of obscurity and privation,--their very pretension to
rank and title a thing to conceal; their ancient blood a subject of
scorn and insult. But I remember the Marquis de Nipernois a haughty
noble in the haughtiest court of Europe; I have see that very Marquis
receiving royalty on the steps of his own chateau, and have witnessed
his days of greatness and grandeur."

"True," said I, "but even with due allowance for all this, I cannot
regard the matter in the same light that you do. To my eyes, there is no
such dignity in the life of a nun, nor any such disgrace in that of an
actress."

I said this purposely in the very strongest terms I could employ, to see
how he would reply to it.

"And you are right, Gervois," said he, laying his hand affectionately on
mine. "You are right. Genius and goodness can ennoble any station, and
there are few places where such qualities exert such influence as the
stage."

I suffered him to continue without interruption in this strain,
for every word he spoke served to confirm me in my suspicion of his
dishonesty. Mistaking the attention with which I listened for an
evidence of conviction, he enlarged upon the theme, and ended at last by
the conclusion that to judge of Margot's actions fairly we should first
learn her motives.

"Who can tell," said he, "what good she may not have proposed to
herself!--by what years of patient endurance and study--by what passages
of suffering and sorrow--she may have planned some great and good
object! It is a narrow view of life that limits itself to the day we
live in. They who measure their station by the task they perform, and
not by its results on the world at large, are but shortsighted mortals;
and it is thus I would speak to yourself, Gervois. You are dissatisfied
with your path in life. You complain of it as irksome, and even ignoble.
Have you never asked yourself, is not this mere egotism? Have I the
right to think only of what suits me,