n laughs so long as she is heart-free, and saddens only when she
loves; whereupon Louise took a lofty tone, and began one of her long
orations, interlarded with high-sounding words.

"Was that your promise to me, Lucien?" she said, as she made an end.
"Do not sow regrets in the present time, so sweet as it is, to poison
my after life. Do not spoil the future, and, I say it with pride, do not
spoil the present! Is not my whole heart yours? What more must you have?
Can it be that your love is influenced by the clamor of the senses, when
it is the noblest privilege of the beloved to silence them? For whom do
you take me? Am I not your Beatrice? If I am not something more than a
woman for you, I am less than a woman."

"That is just what you might say to a man if you cared nothing at all
for him," cried Lucien, frantic with passion.

"If you cannot feel all the sincere love underlying my ideas, you will
never be worthy of me."

"You are throwing doubts on my love to dispense yourself from responding
to it," cried Lucien, and he flung himself weeping at her feet.

The poor boy cried in earnest at the prospect of remaining so long
at the gate of paradise. The tears of the poet, who feels that he is
humbled through his strength, were mingled with childish crying for a
plaything.

"You have never loved me!" he cried.

"You do not believe what you say," she answered, flattered by his
violence.

"Then give me proof that you are mine," said the disheveled poet.

Just at that moment Stanislas came up unheard by either of the pair. He
beheld Lucien in tears, half reclining on the floor, with his head on
Louise's knee. The attitude was suspicious enough to satisfy Stanislas;
he turned sharply round upon Chatelet, who stood at the door of the
salon. Mme. de Bargeton sprang up in a moment, but the spies beat a
precipate retreat like intruders, and she was not quick enough for them.

"Who came just now?" she asked the servants.

"M. de Chandour and M. du Chatelet," said Gentil, her old footman.

Mme. de Bargeton went back, pale and trembling, to her boudoir.

"If they saw you just now, I am lost," she told Lucien.

"So much the better!" exclaimed the poet, and she smiled to hear the
cry, so full of selfish love.

A story of this kind is aggravated in the provinces by the way in which
it is told. Everybody knew in a moment that Lucien had been detected at
Nais feet. M. de Chandour, elated by the important part he played