nds a sort of tacit wager was established. Louise having taken the
side of romantic passion, Renee held firmly to that of superior reason;
and in order to win the game, she had maintained a courage of good sense
and wisdom which might have cost her far more to practise without this
incentive. At the age she had now reached, and with her long habit
of self-control, we can understand how, seeing, as she believed, the
approach of a love against which she had preached so vehemently, she
should instantly set to work to rebuff it; but a man who did not feel
that love, while thinking her ideally beautiful, and who possibly
loved elsewhere,--a man who had saved her child from death and asked
no recompense, who was grave, serious, and preoccupied in an absorbing
enterprise,--why should she still continue to think such a man
dangerous? Why not grant to him, without further hesitation, the
lukewarm sentiment of friendship?

VI. CURIOSITY THAT CAME WITHIN AN ACE OF BEING FATAL

On returning to Ville d'Avray, Sallenauve was confronted by a singular
event. Who does not know how sudden events upset the whole course of our
lives, and place us, without our will, in compromising positions?

Sallenauve was not mistaken in feeling serious anxiety as to the mental
state of his friend Marie-Gaston.

When that unfortunate man had left the scene of his cruel loss
immediately after the death of his wife, he would have done a wiser
thing had he then resolved never to revisit it. Nature, providentially
ordered, provides that if those whose nearest and dearest are struck by
the hand of death accept the decree with the resignation which ought to
follow the execution of all necessary law, they will not remain too long
under the influence of their grief. Rousseau has said, in his famous
letter against suicide: "Sadness, weariness of spirit, regret, despair
are not lasting sorrows, rooted forever in the soul; experience will
always cast out that feeling of bitterness which makes us at first
believe our grief eternal."

But this truth ceases to be true for imprudent and wilful persons, who
seek to escape the first anguish of sorrow by flight or some violent
distraction. All mental and moral suffering is a species of illness
which, taking time for its specific, will gradually wear out, in the
long run, of itself. If, on the contrary, it is not allowed to consume
itself slowly on the scene of its trouble, if it is fanned into flame by
motion o