ender. And the
tenderness of Raoul towards her was that of some saint-like nature
towards the acolyte whom it attracted upwards. He had once, just before
Enguerrand's death, spoken to Isaura with a touching candour as to his
own predilection for a monastic life. "The worldly avocations that open
useful and honourable careers for others have no charm for me. I care
not for riches nor power, nor honours nor fame. The austerities of the
conventual life have no terror for me; on the contrary, they have
a charm, for with them are abstraction from earth and meditation on
heaven. In earlier years I might, like other men, have cherished
dreams of human love, and felicity in married life, but for the sort
of veneration with which I regarded one to whom I owe--humanly
speaking--whatever of good there may be in me. Just when first taking
my place among the society of young men who banish from their life all
thought of another, I came under the influence of a woman who taught me
to see that holiness was beauty. She gradually associated me with her
acts of benevolence, and from her I learned to love God too well not to
be indulgent to his creatures. I know not whether the attachment I
felt to her could have been inspired in one who had not from childhood
conceived a romance, not perhaps justified by history, for the ideal
images of chivalry. My feeling for her at first was that of the pure
and poetic homage which a young knight was permitted, sans reproche, to
render to some fair queen or chatelaine, whose colours he wore in the
lists, whose spotless repute he would have perilled his life to defend.
But soon even that sentiment, pure as it was, became chastened from all
breath of earthly love, in proportion as the admiration refined itself
into reverence. She has often urged me to marry, but I have no bride on
this earth. I do but want to see Enguerrand happily married, and then I
quit the world for the cloister."

But after Enguerrand's death, Raoul resigned all idea of the convent.
That evening, as he attended to their homes Isaura and the other ladies
at to the ambulance, he said, in answer to inquiries about his mother,
"She is resigned and calm. I have promised her I will not, while she
lives, bury her other son: I renounce my dreams of the monastery."

Raoul did not remain many minutes at Isaura's. The Abbe accompanied him
on his way home. "I have a request to make to you," said the former;
"you know, of course, your distant