toward the implacable reality. To
begin with, the person called Belisaire--who should in reality have been
named Resignation, Devotion, or Patience--was now obliged to relinquish
his pleasant room and sleep in a closet, the only place on that floor;
not for worlds would he have gone farther from Madame Weber.

Their guests gone, and Jack and his mother alone, she was astonished to
see him bring out a pile of books.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I am going to study." And he then told her of the double life he led;
of his hopes, and the reward that was held out to him at the end. Until
then he had never confided them to her, fearing that she would inform
D'Argenton, whom he utterly distrusted, and he feared that in some way
his happiness would be compromised. But now that his mother belonged to
him alone, he could speak to her of Cecile and of his supreme joy. Jack
talked with enthusiasm of his love, but soon saw that his mother did not
understand him. She had a certain amount of sentiment, but love had not
the same signification for her that it had for him. She listened to him
with the same interest that she would have felt in the third act at
the _Gymnase_, when the _Ingenue_ in a white dress, with rose-colored
ribbons, listened to the declaration of a lover with frizzed hair. She
was pleased with the spectacle as presented by her son, and said two
or three times, "How nice! how very nice! It makes me think of Paul and
Virginia!"

Fortunately, lovers, when speaking of their passion, listen to the
echoes of their words in their own hearts, and Jack, thus absorbed,
heard none of the commonplace comments of his mother.

Jack had been living a week in this way when, one evening, Belisaire
came to meet him with a radiant face. "We are to be married at once!
Madame Weber has found a 'comrade.'"

Jack, who had been the unintentional cause of his friend's
disappointment, was equally well pleased. This pleasure, however, did
not last; for, on seeing "the comrade," he received a most unpleasant
impression. The man was tall and powerfully built, but the expression of
his face was far from agreeable.

The great day arrived at last. Among the middle classes, a day is
generally given to the civil marriage, another to the wedding at the
church; but the people to whom time is money cannot afford this. So they
generally take Saturday for the two ceremonies.

Belisaire's wedding, therefore, occurred on that day, and