en die for love. Know you, and give you up? I will yield you to none,
not even to Death, for I should die with you."

She led me to her rooms, where comfort had already spread its charms.

"Love her, dear," I said warmly. "She loves you sincerely, not in jest."

"Sincerely! you poor child!" she said, unfastening her habit.

With a lover's vanity I tried to exhibit Henriette's noble character to
this imperious creature. While her waiting-woman, who did not understand
a word of French, arranged her hair I endeavored to picture Madame de
Mortsauf by sketching her life; I repeated many of the great thoughts
she had uttered at a crisis when nearly all women become either petty or
bad. Though Arabella appeared to be paying no attention she did not lose
a single word.

"I am delighted," she said when we were alone, "to learn your taste
for pious conversation. There's an old vicar on one of my estates
who understands writing sermons better than any one I know; the
country-people like him, for he suits his prosing to his hearers. I'll
write to my father to-morrow and ask him to send the good man here by
steamboat; you can meet him in Paris, and when once you have heard him
you will never wish to listen to any one else,--all the more because his
health is perfect. His moralities won't give you shocks that make you
weep; they flow along without tempests, like a limpid stream, and
will send you to sleep. Every evening you can if you like satisfy your
passion for sermons by digesting one with your dinner. English morality,
I do assure you, is as superior to that of Touraine as our cutlery,
our plate, and our horses are to your knives and your turf. Do me
the kindness to listen to my vicar; promise me. I am only a woman, my
dearest; I can love, I can die for you if you will; but I have never
studied at Eton, or at Oxford, or in Edinburgh. I am neither a doctor of
laws nor a reverend; I can't preach morality; in fact, I am altogether
unfit for it, I should be awkward if I tried. I don't blame your tastes;
you might have others more depraved, and I should still endeavor
to conform to them, for I want you to find near me all you like
best,--pleasures of love, pleasures of food, pleasures of piety, good
claret, and virtuous Christians. Shall I wear hair-cloth to-night? She
is very lucky, that woman, to suit you in morality. From what college
did she graduate? Poor I, who can only give you myself, who can only be
your slave--"

"The