ggled: with determined energy I strove to drive off that
radiant image which I carried within my soul, which left me no more,
which haunted me in the midst of my studies.

"Vain efforts. My thoughts obeyed me no longer--my will escaped
my control. It was indeed one of those passions that fill the whole
being, overpower all, and which make of life an ineffable felicity
or a nameless torture, according that they are reciprocated, or not.
How many days I spent there, waiting and watching for her of whom I
had thus had a glimpse, and who ignored my very existence! And what
insane palpitations, when, after hours of consuming anxiety, I saw
at the corner of the street the undulating folds of her dress! I
saw her thus often, and always with the same elderly person, her
mother. They had adopted in this square a particular bench, where
they sat daily, working at their sewing with an assiduity and zeal
which made me think that they lived upon the product of their labor."

Here he was suddenly interrupted by his companion. The old gentleman
feared that Mme. Favoral's attention might at last be attracted by
too direct allusions.

"Take care, boy!" he whispered, not so low, however, but what
Gilberte overheard him.

But it would have required much more than this to draw Mme. Favoral
from her sad thoughts. She had just finished her band of tapestry;
and, grieving to lose a moment:

"It is perhaps time to go home," she said to her daughter. "I have
nothing more to do."

Mlle. Gilberte drew from her basket a piece of canvas, and, handing
it to her mother:

"Here is enough to go on with, mamma," she said in a troubled voice.
"Let us stay a little while longer."

And, Mme. Favoral having resumed her work, Marius proceeded:

"The thought that she whom I loved was poor delighted me. Was not
this similarity of positions a link between us? I felt a childish
joy to think that I would work for her and for her mother, and that
they would be indebted to me for their ease and comfort in life.

"But I am not one of those dreamers who confide their destiny to the
wings of a chimera. Before undertaking any thing, I resolved to
inform myself. Alas! at the first words that I heard, all my fine
dreams took wings. I heard that she was rich, very rich. I was
told that her father was one of those men whose rigid probity
surrounds itself with austere and harsh forms. He owed his fortune,
I was assured, to his sole labor, but als