have thought you had an
enemy in me."

"But, Madame la comtesse," replied la Peyrade, allowing her to read in
his eyes an astonishment mingled with distrust, "all the appearances,
you must admit, were of that nature. A suitor interposes to break off a
marriage which has been offered to me with every inducement; this
rival does me the service of showing himself so miraculously stupid and
awkward that I could easily have set him aside, when suddenly a most
unlooked-for and able auxiliary devotes herself to protecting him on the
very ground where he shows himself most vulnerable."

"You must admit," said the countess, laughing, "that the protege
showed himself a most intelligent man, and that he seconded my efforts
valiantly."

"His clumsiness could not have been, I think, very unexpected to you,"
replied la Peyrade; "therefore the protection you have deigned to give
him is the more cruel to me."

"What a misfortune it would be," said the countess, with charmingly
affected satire, "if your marriage with Mademoiselle Celeste were
prevented! Do you really care so much, monsieur, for that little
school-girl?"

In that last word, especially the intonation with which it was uttered,
there was more than contempt, there was hatred. This expression did
not escape an observer of la Peyrade's strength, but not being a man to
advance very far on a single remark he merely replied:--

"Madame, the vulgar expression, to 'settle down,' explains this
situation, in which a man, after many struggles and being at an end of
his efforts and his illusions, makes a compromise with the future.
When this compromise takes the form of a young girl with, I admit, more
virtue than beauty, but one who brings to a husband the fortune which
is indispensable to the comfort of married life, what is there so
astonishing in the fact that his heart yields to gratitude and that he
welcomes the prospect of a placid happiness?"

"I have always thought," replied the countess, "that the power of a
man's intellect ought to be the measure of his ambition; and I imagined
that one so wise as to make himself, at first, the poor man's lawyer,
would have in his heart less humble and less pastoral aspirations."

"Ah! madame," returned la Peyrade, "the iron hand of necessity compels
us to strange resignations. The question of daily bread is one of those
before which all things bend the knee. Apollo was forced to 'get a
living,' as the shepherd of Admetus."

"T