r
the conclusion of the ceremony, we were to depart for Paris; and it is
true I felt for M. d'Harville none of that love with which a young wife
ought to regard the man she vows her future life to, but I admired and
respected his character and disposition, and, but for the disastrous
events which followed this fatal union, a more tender feeling could
doubtless soon have attached me to him. Well, we were married."

At these words, Madame d'Harville turned rather pale, and her resolution
appeared to forsake her. After a pause, she resumed:

"Immediately after the ceremony, my father embraced me tenderly, as did
Madame Roland also. Before so many persons I could not avoid the display
of this fresh exhibition of hypocrisy. With her dry and white hand she
squeezed mine so hard as to pain me, and said, in a whisper, and in a
tone as gentle as it was perfidious, these words, which I never can
forget: 'Think of me sometimes in the midst of your bliss, for it was I
who arranged your marriage.' Alas, I was far from comprehending at that
moment the full force of those words! Our marriage took place at eleven
o'clock, and we immediately entered our carriage, followed by my
waiting-woman and the old _valet de chambre_ of M. d'Harville's, and we
travelled so rapidly that we reached Paris before ten o'clock in the
evening. I should have been surprised at the silence and melancholy of
M. d'Harville had I not known that he had what he termed his happy
sadness. I was myself painfully disturbed; I was returning to Paris for
the first time since my mother's death; I arrived there alone with my
husband, whom I had hardly known more than six weeks, and who, up to the
evening before, had not addressed a word to me but what was marked by
respectful formality. Men, however well bred, do not think sufficiently
of the fear which the sudden change in their tone and manners occasions
to a young female as soon as she belongs to them; they do not reflect
that a youthful maiden cannot in a few hours forget all her timidity and
virgin scruples."

"Nothing is to me more barbarous than this system of carrying off a
young female as soon as the wedding ceremony is over,--a ceremony which
ought to consecrate the right and duty to employ still more every
tenderness of love and effort to render mutual affection still stronger
and more endearing."

"You will imagine, monseigneur, the indefinable alarm with which I found
myself in Paris,--in the city in whi