rs of the stuffs and
the tapestries were more vivid, more of love was in the air, more fire
about them, than there had been in the actual scene. The Marie of his
sleep resisted far less than the living Marie those adoring looks,
those tender entreaties, those adroit silences, those voluptuous
solicitations, those false generosities, which render the first moments
of a passion so completely ardent, and shed into the soul a fresh
delirium at each new step in love.

Following the amorous jurisprudence of the period, Marie de
Saint-Vallier granted to her lover all the superficial rights of the
tender passion. She willingly allowed him to kiss her foot, her robe,
her hands, her throat; she avowed her love, she accepted the devotion
and life of her lover; she permitted him to die for her; she yielded to
an intoxication which the sternness of her semi-chastity increased; but
farther than that she would not go; and she made her deliverance the
price of the highest rewards of his love. In those days, in order to
dissolve a marriage it was necessary to go to Rome; to obtain the help
of certain cardinals, and to appear before the sovereign pontiff
in person armed with the approval of the king. Marie was firm in
maintaining her liberty to love, that she might sacrifice it to
him later. Nearly every woman in those days had sufficient power to
establish her empire over the heart of a man in a way to make that
passion the history of his whole life, the spring and principle of his
highest resolutions. Women were a power in France; they were so many
sovereigns; they had forms of noble pride; their lovers belonged to them
far more than they gave themselves to their lovers; often their love
cost blood, and to be their lover it was necessary to incur great
dangers. But the Marie of his dream made small defence against the young
seigneur's ardent entreaties. Which of the two was the reality? Did the
false apprentice in his dream see the true woman? Had he seen in the
hotel de Poitiers a lady masked in virtue? The question is difficult to
decide; and the honor of women demands that it be left, as it were, in
litigation.

At the moment when the Marie of the dream may have been about to forget
her high dignity as mistress, the lover felt himself seized by an iron
hand, and the sour voice of the grand provost said to him:--

"Come, midnight Christian, who seeks God on the roofs, wake up!"

The young man saw the black face of Tristan l'Hermi