nt to share it when my heart
shrank from the thought of our union? And now when, if I understand you
rightly, I am free, I cannot but think of what was best in him."

"Alas! Mademoiselle, he is but one of many--a spoilt child of that
Circe, imperial Paris. Everywhere I look around, I see but corruption.
It was hidden by the halo which corruption itself engenders. The halo
is gone, the corruption is visible. Where is the old French manhood?
Banished from the heart, it comes out only at the tongue. Were our
deeds like our words, Prussia would beg on her knee to be a province of
France. Gustave is the fit poet for this generation. Vanity--desire to
be known for something, no matter what, no matter by whom--that is the
Parisian's leading motive power;--orator, soldier, poet, all alike.
Utterers of fine phrases; despising knowledge, and toil, and discipline;
railing against the Germans as barbarians, against their generals as
traitors; against God for not taking their part. What can be done to
weld this mass of hollow bubbles into the solid form of a nation--the
nation it affects to be? What generation can be born out of the unmanly
race, inebriate with brag and absinthe? Forgive me this tirade; I have
been reviewing the battalion I command. As for Gustave Rameau,--if
we survive the siege, and see once more a Government that can enforce
order, and a public that will refuse renown for balderdash,--I should
not be surprised if Gustave Rameau were among the prettiest imitators
of Lamartine's early Meditations. Had he been born under Louis XIV. how
loyal he would have been! What sacred tragedies in the style of Athalie
he would have written, in the hope of an audience at Versailles! But I
detain you from the letter I was charged to deliver you. I have done so
purposely, that I might convince myself that you welcome that release
which your too delicate sense of honour shrank too long from demanding."

Here he took forth and placed a letter in Isaura's hand; and, as if to
allow her to read it unobserved, retired to the window recess.

Isaura glanced over the letter. It ran thus:

"I feel that it was only to your compassion that I owed your consent to
my suit. Could I have doubted that before, your words when we last met
sufficed to convince me. In my selfish pain at the moment, I committed
a great wrong. I would have held you bound to a promise from which you
desired to be free. Grant me pardon for that; and for all the faults