, an
angel of sweetness."

"As for monsieur Felix, I venture to interest myself because, in the
first place, he is the son of so virtuous a father--"

"Oh, madame! I entreat--" said Phellion, bowing again.

"--and he also attracts me by the awkwardness of true love, which
appears in all his actions and all his words. We mature women find an
inexpressible charm in seeing the tender passion under a form which
threatens us with no deceptions and no misunderstandings."

"My son is certainly not brilliant," said Madame Phellion, with a faint
tone of sharpness; "he is not a fashionable young man."

"But he has the qualities that are most essential," replied the
countess, "and a merit which ignores itself,--a thing of the utmost
consequence in all intellectual superiority--"

"Really, madame," said Phellion, "you force us to hear things that--"

"That are not beyond the truth," interrupted the countess. "Another
reason which leads me to take a deep interest in the happiness of these
young people is that I am not so desirous for that of Monsieur Theodose
de la Peyrade, who is false and grasping. On the ruin of their hopes
that man is counting to carry out his swindling purposes."

"It is quite certain," said Phellion, "that there are dark depths in
Monsieur de la Peyrade where light does not penetrate."

"And as I myself had the misfortune to marry a man of his description,
the thought of the wretchedness to which Celeste would be condemned
by so fatal a connection, impels me, in the hope of saving her, to the
charitable effort which now, I trust, has ceased to surprise you."

"Madame," said Phellion, "we do not need the conclusive explanations by
which you illumine your conduct; but as to the faults on our part, which
have thwarted your generous efforts, I must declare that in order to
avoid committing them in future, it seems to me not a little desirable
that you should plainly indicate them."

"How long is it," asked the countess, "since any of your family have
paid a visit to the Thuilliers'?"

"If my memory serves me," said Phellion, "I think we were all there the
Sunday after the dinner for the house-warming."

"Fifteen whole days of absence!" exclaimed the countess; "and you think
that nothing of importance could happen in fifteen days?"

"No, indeed! did not three glorious days in July, 1830, cast down a
perjured dynasty and found the noble order of things under which we now
live?"

"You see it yoursel