e and to take
pleasure in thwarting them. At last I could endure it no longer. Putting
down my book suddenly, I broke off the translation I was making of it
aloud, and said to him in Spanish:

"You are deceiving us. You are no poor middle-class Liberal. You are the
Duke de Soria!"

"Mademoiselle," he replied, with a gesture of sorrow, "unhappily, I am
not the Duc de Soria."

I felt all the despair with which he uttered the word "unhappily." Ah!
my dear, never should I have conceived it possible to throw so much
meaning and passion into a single word. His eyes had dropped, and he
dared no longer look at me.

"M. de Talleyrand," I said, "in whose house you spent your years of
exile, declares that any one bearing the name of Henarez must either be
the late Duc de Soria or a lacquey."

He looked at me with eyes like two black burning coals, at once blazing
and ashamed. The man might have been in the torture-chamber. All he said
was:

"My father was in truth the servant of the King of Spain."

Griffith could make nothing of this sort of lesson. An awkward silence
followed each question and answer.

"In one word," I said, "are you a nobleman or not?"

"You know that in Spain even beggars are noble."

This reticence provoked me. Since the last lesson I had given play to my
imagination in a little practical joke. I had drawn an ideal portrait
of the man whom I should wish for my lover in a letter which I designed
giving to him to translate. So far, I had only put Spanish into French,
not French into Spanish; I pointed this out to him, and begged Griffith
to bring me the last letter I had received from a friend of mine.

"I shall find out," I thought, from the effect my sketch has on him,
"what sort of blood runs in his veins."

I took the paper from Griffith's hands, saying:

"Let me see if I have copied it rightly."

For it was all in my writing. I handed him the paper, or, if you will,
the snare, and I watched him while he read as follows:

"He who is to win my heart, my dear, must be harsh and unbending with
men, but gentle with women. His eagle eye must have power to quell with
a single glance the least approach to ridicule. He will have a pitying
smile for those who would jeer at sacred things, above all, at
that poetry of the heart, without which life would be but a dreary
commonplace. I have the greatest scorn for those who would rob us of
the living fountain of religious beliefs, so rich in solace. Hi