sleeping with folded hands, and
a smile on her lips, on her couch of hyacinths and tuberoses. Dead for
love; and how passionately Albine and Serge loved each other, in the
great garden their tempter, in the bosom of Nature their accomplice! And
what a flood of life swept away all false bonds, and what a triumph of
life!"

Clotilde, she too troubled by this passionate flow of murmured words,
gazed at him intently. She had never ventured to speak to him of another
story that she had heard--the story of the one love of his life--a love
which he had cherished in secret for a lady now dead. It was said that
he had attended her for a long time without ever so much as venturing to
kiss the tips of her fingers. Up to the present, up to near sixty, study
and his natural timidity had made him shun women. But, notwithstanding,
one felt that he was reserved for some great passion, with his feelings
still fresh and ardent, in spite of his white hair.

"And the girl that died, the girl they mourned," she resumed, her voice
trembling, her cheeks scarlet, without knowing why. "Serge did not love
her, then, since he let her die?"

Pascal started as though awakening from a dream, seeing her beside him
in her youthful beauty, with her large, clear eyes shining under the
shadow of her broad-brimmed hat. Something had happened; the same breath
of life had passed through them both; they did not take each other's
arms again. They walked side by side.

"Ah, my dear, the world would be too beautiful, if men did not spoil it
all! Albine is dead, and Serge is now rector of St. Eutrope, where
he lives with his sister Desiree, a worthy creature who has the good
fortune to be half an idiot. He is a holy man; I have never said the
contrary. One may be an assassin and serve God."

And he went on speaking of the hard things of life, of the blackness
and execrableness of humanity, without losing his gentle smile. He loved
life; and the continuous work of life was a continual joy to him
in spite of all the evil, all the misery, that it might contain. It
mattered not how dreadful life might appear, it must be great and good,
since it was lived with so tenacious a will, for the purpose no doubt
of this will itself, and of the great work which it unconsciously
accomplished. True, he was a scientist, a clear-sighted man; he did not
believe in any idyllic humanity living in a world of perpetual peace; he
saw, on the contrary, its woes and its vices; he