u laugh by telling you
of it; but there you are looking more dull, and solid, and serious than
ever!"

"Pray forgive me if I cannot be as mirthful as your kind heart would
have me; you know I never have what is styled high spirits, and just now
I feel it impossible even to affect them."

Rigolette was very desirous of concealing that, spite of her lively
prattle, she was to the full as sad and heavy-hearted as Germain
himself could be. She therefore hastened to change the conversation by
saying:

"You say it is impossible for you to conquer your low spirits, but there
are other things you choose to style impossibilities I have begged and
prayed of you to do, because I very well know you could, if you chose."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean your obstinate avoidance of all the other prisoners, and never
speaking to one of them; the turnkey has just been talking to me about
it, and he says that for your own sake you ought to associate with them
a little. I am sure it would not do you any harm; you do not speak; it
is always the way. I see very well you will never be satisfied till
these dreadful men have played you some dangerous trick in revenge."

"You know not the horror with which they inspire me, any more than you
can guess the personal reasons I have for avoiding and execrating them,
and all who resemble them."

"Indeed, but I do know your reasons! I read the accounts you wrote for
me, and which I went to fetch away from your lodgings after your
imprisonment; from them I learned all the dangers you had incurred upon
your arrival in Paris, because, when you were in the country, you
refused to participate in the crimes of the bad man who had brought you
up; and that it was in consequence of the last snare they laid to catch
you that you quitted the Rue du Temple, without telling any one but me
where you had gone to. And I read something else, too, in those papers,"
said Rigolette, casting down her eyes, while a bright blush dyed her
cheeks; "I read things that--that--"

"You would never have known, I solemnly declare," exclaimed Germain,
eagerly, "had it not been for the misfortune which befell me. But let me
ask you to be as generous as you are good; forget and pardon my past
follies, my insane hopes. 'Tis true, in times past I ventured to
indulge such dreams, wild and unfounded as they were."

Rigolette had endeavoured a second time to draw a confession of his love
from the lips of Germain by alluding to tho