struggling
against misfortune; Christian charity enfolds both the strong and the
weak; its treasure belongs to both. Refined, graceful, elegant as you
are, made to be an ornament of the highest society, what man could see
you without feeling an immense compassion in his heart--buried here
among these odious bourgeois, who know nothing of you, not even
the aristocratic value of a single one of your attitudes, or those
enchanting inflections of your voice! Ah! if I were only rich! if I
had power! your husband, who is certainly a good fellow, should be made
receiver-general, and you yourself could get him elected deputy. But,
alas! poor ambitious man, my first duty is to silence my ambition.
Knowing myself at the bottom of the bag like the last number in a family
lottery, I can only offer you my arm and not my heart. I hope all from a
good marriage, and, believe me, I shall make my wife not only happy, but
I shall make her one of the first in the land, receiving from her the
means of success. It is so fine a day, will you not take a turn in the
Luxembourg?" he added, as they reached the rue d'Enfer at the corner
of Colleville's house, opposite to which was a passage leading to the
gardens by the stairway of a little building, the last remains of the
famous convent of the Chartreux.

The soft yielding of the arm within his own, indicated a tacit consent
to this proposal, and as Flavie deserved the honor of a sort of
enthusiasm, he drew her vehemently along, exclaiming:--

"Come! we may never have so good a moment--But see!" he added, "there is
your husband at the window looking at us; let us walk slowly."

"You have nothing to fear from Monsieur Colleville," said Flavie,
smiling; "he leaves me mistress of my own actions."

"Ah! here, indeed, is the woman I have dreamed of," cried the Provencal,
with that ecstasy that inflames the soul only, and in tones that issue
only from Southern lips. "Pardon me, madame," he said, recovering
himself, and returning from an upper sphere to the exiled angel whom he
looked at piously,--"pardon me, I abandon what I was saying; but how
can a man help feeling for the sorrows he has known himself when he
sees them the lot of a being to whom life should bring only joy and
happiness? Your sufferings are mine; I am no more in my right place than
you are in yours; the same misfortune has made us brother and sister.
Ah! dear Flavie, the first day it was granted to me to see you--the last
Sunday