n which a more
suitable marriage may present itself?"

"But, at least, madame, I must be enabled to foresee it definitely."

This persistence in demanding pledges seemed to irritate the countess.

"Faith," she said, "is only a virtue when it believes without seeing.
You doubt yourself, and that is another form of stupidity. I am not
happy, it seems, in my selection of those I desire to benefit."

"But, madame, it cannot be indiscreet to ask to know in some remote way
at least, what future your kind good-will has imagined for me."

"It is very indiscreet," replied the countess, coldly, "and it shows
plainly that you offer me only a conditional confidence. Let us say no
more. You are certainly far advanced with Mademoiselle Colleville; she
suits you, you say, in many ways; therefore marry her. I say again, you
will no longer find me in your way."

"But does Mademoiselle Colleville really suit me?" resumed la Peyrade;
"that is the very point on which you have lately raised my doubts.
Do you not think there is something cruel in casting me first in one
direction and then in the other without affording me any ground to go
upon?"

"Ah!" said the countess, in a tone of impatience, "you want my opinion
on the premises! Well, monsieur, there is one very conclusive fact to
which I can bring proof: Celeste does not love you."

"So I have thought," said la Peyrade, humbly. "I felt that I was making
a marriage of mere convenience."

"And she cannot love you, because," continued Madame de Godollo, with
animation, "she cannot comprehend you. Her proper husband is that blond
little man, insipid as herself; from the union of those two natures
without life or heat will result in that lukewarm existence which, in
the opinion of the world where she was born and where she has lived,
is the ne plus ultra of conjugal felicity. Try to make that little
simpleton understand that when she had a chance to unite herself with
true talent she ought to have felt highly honored! But, above all, try
to make her miserable, odious family and surroundings understand it!
Enriched bourgeois, parvenus! there's the roof beneath which you think
to rest from your cruel labor and your many trials! And do you believe
that you will not be made to feel, twenty times a day, that your share
in the partnership is distressingly light in the scale against their
money? On one side, the Iliad, the Cid, Der Freyschutz, and the frescos
of the Vatican; on the other,