till
I shall be gone, to meet there, at his side, your father and your mother.
Do not go, Jean, do not go."

"If you love me, I love you, too, and you know it well."

"Yes, I know it."

"I have just the same affection for you now that I had when I was quite
little, when you took me to yourself, when you brought me up. My heart
has not changed, will never change. But if duty--if honor--oblige me to
go?"

"Ah, if it is duty, if it is honor, I say nothing more, Jean, that stands
before all!--all!--all! I have always known you a good judge of your
duty, your honor. Go, my boy, go, I ask you nothing more, I wish to know
no more."

"But I wish to tell you all," cried Jean, vanquished by his emotion, "and
it is better that you should know all. You will stay here, you will
return to the castle, you will see her again--her!"

"See her! Who?"

"Bettina!"

"Bettina?"

"I adore her, I adore her!"

"Oh, my poor boy!"

"Pardon me for speaking to you of these things; but I tell you as I would
have told my father."

"And then, I have not been able to speak of it to any one, and it stifled
me; yes, it is a madness which has seized me, which has grown upon me,
little by little, against my will, for you know very-well--My God! It was
here that I began to love her. You know, when she came here with her
sister--with the little 'rouleaux' of francs--her hair fell down--and
then the evening, the month of Mary! Then I was permitted to see her
freely, familiarly, and you, yourself, spoke to me constantly of her. You
praised her sweetness, her goodness. How often have you told me that
there was no one in the world better than she is!"

"And I thought it, and I think it still. And no one here knows her better
than I do, for it is I alone who have seen her with the poor. If you only
knew how tender, and how good she is! Neither wretchedness nor suffering
repulse her. But, my dear boy, I am wrong to tell you all this."

"No, no, I will see her no more, I promise you; but I like to hear you
speak of her."

"In your whole life, Jean, you will never meet a better woman, nor one
who has more elevated sentiments. To such a point, that one day--she had
taken me with her in an open carriage, full of toys--she was taking these
toys to a poor sick little girl, and when she gave them to her, to make
the poor little thing laugh, to amuse her, she talked so prettily to her
that I thought of you, and I said to myself, I remember it now, 'Ah