e
on returning from some fete, or got into it in the morning when she took
her drive, to meet her on the boulevards in her pretty equipage,
looking like a flower in a whorl of leaves, inspired poor Thaddeus with
mysterious delights, which glowed in the depths of his heart but gave no
signs upon his face.

How happened it that for five whole months the countess had never
perceived the captain? Because he hid himself from her knowledge, and
carefully concealed the pains he took to avoid her. Nothing so resembles
the Divine love as hopeless human love. A man must have great depth of
heart to devote himself in silence and obscurity to a woman. In such
a heart is the worship of love for love's sake only--sublime avarice,
sublime because ever generous and founded on the mysterious existence
of the principles of creation. _Effect_ is nature, and nature is
enchanting; it belongs to man, to the poet, the painter, the lover. But
_Cause_, to a few privileged souls and to certain mighty thinkers,
is superior to nature. Cause is God. In the sphere of causes live
the Newtons and all such thinkers as Laplace, Kepler, Descartes,
Malebranche, Spinoza, Buffon; also the true poets and solitarys of
the second Christian century, and the Saint Teresas of Spain, and such
sublime ecstatics. All human sentiments bear analogy to these conditions
whenever the mind abandons Effect for Cause. Thaddeus had reached this
height, at which all things change their relative aspect. Filled with
the joys unutterable of a creator he had attained in his love to all
that genius has revealed to us of grandeur.

"No," he was thinking to himself as he watched the curling smoke of his
pipe, "she was not entirely deceived. She might break up my friendship
with Adam if she took a dislike to me; but if she coquetted with me to
amuse herself, what would become of me?"

The conceit of this last supposition was so foreign to the modest
nature and Teutonic timidity of the captain that he scolded himself for
admitting it, and went to bed, resolved to await events before deciding
on a course.

The next day Clementine breakfasted very contentedly without Paz, and
without even noticing his disobedience to her orders. It happened to be
her reception day, when the house was thrown open with a splendor that
was semi-royal. She paid no attention to the absence of Comte Paz, on
whom all the burden of these parade days fell.

"Good!" thought he, as he heard the last carriage