528 FJIENCH NOVELISTS 



feel the obstacles that separate us ; you cannot marry the woman who, in 

 the freshness of youth and beauty, was your mistress, concealed and ob- 

 serve, waiting- with impatience for the short visits you could pay her 

 in the interval of two campaigns. She has known misery in all its horrors.' 



" Fulgence covered his face with his hands. ' Your sufferings goto my 

 heart, but you are unjust in attributing them all to me. I gave way to 

 the power which your beauty and the qualities of your mind were calcu- 

 lated to exercise over the breast, but 1 was not then aware of the rash in- 

 fluence of marriage upon the life of a man. I promised in a moment of 

 phrenzy, when I could have promised to die after. But I leave it to your- 

 elf, Stephane, coidd you be made happy by a union which must mar my 

 destiny? You are poor. I have nothing but my scanty pay. I will divide 

 it with you. I am not to blame for the prejudices of the world; would it 

 not close its doors against you ? Could I enter it without you, and be subject 

 to the ironical whispers of malicious fools ? I have given proofs of courage 

 in the field, but I fear a naked sword less than a sarcasm. I cannot shut 

 myself up in my brother's factory. I have lost the belief in religion by 

 which he regulates his life; I abhor hypocrisy, and nothing can be 

 more tiresome than perpetual discussions that lead to nothing. Let us 

 both preserve our independence ; let us be united in heart it is the only 

 union that society will permit us to indulge.' 



" ' Any thing farther is superfluous/ said Stephane, with dignity. ' I want 

 not your alms, the labour of my hands shall be my support/ 



" ' In what a dilemma do you place me, between the indelicacy of giving 

 an alms or the baseness of abandoning you !' 



" ' While I am between the infamy of receiving alms and the misery of 

 servitude. A fine position this !' said she, folding her arms, with a 

 ghastly smile. Here a moment of agonizing silence ensued. 



" ' Stephane ! Stephane !' cried he, ' I have more than once thought of 

 ending the matter with my life, and you this moment place me in contact 

 with the infernal idea of suicide/ 



" ' You commit suicide !' said she ; ( no that is left for me who have no 

 other resource but to imitate some of my predecessors in misfortune. Do you 

 live on, for life still smiles upon you ; I often say to myself you are in the 

 right, that our marriage is impossible, but more frequently I am the victim 

 of the most agonizing tortures. 1 grant you cannot overcome ex- 

 isting prejudices, and 1 should only merge your destiny so full of spirit 

 and vigour in the narrowness of my own as in a leaden shroud. You are 

 right. . . But why did you love me ... forgive me if I cannot 

 forget/ She squeezed his hand, and disappeared in the obscurity of a 

 winding alley." 



We have lingered so long witb tbese extracts that time and space 

 begin to admonish us to hasten to a conclusion. Stephane wears 

 out a wretched existence as governess to the young heiress on whom 

 Fulgence has fixed his affections, and whom, after sundry perplex- 

 ities and obstacles have been surmounted, he at length makes his 

 wife. The Countess de Juviessy continued to seek, in the hurry of 

 dissipation, some relief from the ill-temper of her husband and the 

 tyranny of a profligate son. 



As a contrast to these, we have a beautiful picture of the domestic 

 felicity of the manufacturer Exupere, a felicity based upon the only 

 principles capable of bestowing it a concientious discharge of the 

 moral duties inculcated by religion in this life, and a firm, calm re- 

 liance upon its promises for the next. 



