ame 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, if she were poor!'"

"Ah! if she were poor, but she is not."

"Oh, no! But what can you do, my poor child! If it gives you pain to see
her, to live near her; above all, if it will prevent you suffering--