arried. My feelings, as
I have said, bear a strong resemblance to religious emotion. They
are sad, but in their sadness they still preserve their charm. Grief
corrupts them not. From suffering they derive a wholesome bitterness
that lends them strength. I listened to her with that gentle courage
which comes with renunciation. She was marrying a man senior to myself,
a widower, almost an old man, whose birth and fortune had marked him
out for the public career in which he had displayed a haughtiness of
disposition and much misplaced courage. Although I moved in a lower
sphere, I came in contact with him on several important occasions. I
belonged to a political group with views very similar to his own, but we
had never been able to meet without considerable friction and, although
the newspapers treated us with the same approval or, as was more often
the case, with the same hostility, we were not friends, far from it, and
we avoided each other with sedulous care.

I was present at the wedding. I saw, and I shall ever see Marie, wearing
her white dress and lace veil. She was a little pale and very lovely. I
was struck, without apparent reason, by the impression of fragility with
which this girl who was animated by so poetic a soul seemed to give one.
This impression, which I think occurred to no one but myself, was only
too well founded. I never saw Marie again.

She died after three years of married life, leaving a little girl ten
months old. An indescribable feeling of tender affection has always
drawn me to this child, to Marie's Marguerite. An unconquerable desire
to see her took possession of me.

She was being brought up at ------ near Melun, where her father had a
chateau standing in the midst of a magnificent park. One day I went to
------ and wandered for hours, like a thief, about the park bound-aries.
At last, through a gap in the trees, I caught sight of Marguerite in the
arms of her nurse, who was dressed in black. She was wearing a hat with
white plumes and an embroidered pelisse. I cannot say in what respect
she differed from any other child, but I thought she was the fairest
in the world. It was autumn. The wind that was sighing in the trees
was whirling the dead leaves about in little eddies as they floated
to earth. Dead leaves covered all the long avenue in which the little
white-robed child was being carried up and down. An immense sadness
took possession of me. At the edge of a bed of flowers as white