least learn from
him whether you were well or poorly off. Oh! that man was positively mad
about you!"

So we've got as far as this, eh?

Fanny now raised herself on her elbows, and listened to her mother's
conversation with something of that shuddering curiosity with which
Damiens regarded the wounds made in his body for the reception of the
burning oil.

"Oh, what absurdities that gentleman perpetrated!" continued Mrs. Meyer,
noisily shifting her pillows from one side to the other. "The man was
not aware that they were laughing at and making fun of him. Not a day
passed without his coming to our house, and he said, over and over
again, that if you had been there, he would have made you his wife on
the spot. 'Go along with you, sir!' said I. Ah, my dear sweet girl,
beware when a great nobleman says he will marry you! It is all nonsense;
he wants to make a fool of you!"

Here Mrs. Meyer rested a little, and thus gave Fanny time to complete in
her own mind the suggestion insinuated above as follows--

"But if he says, 'I won't marry you, but I'll give you money,' that's
reason--listen to him. It is only little clerks and twopenny-halfpenny
swells that deceive girls with promises of marriage, and these you must
avoid; but a real gentleman always begins by giving something, and him
you may listen to."

And the shame, the disgrace? Pooh, such is life!

Fanny, horror-stricken, waited to see what else her mother was going to
say. Presently she went on again--

"I didn't know whether to be sorry for or disgusted with the poor man
when I saw him so far gone. Suddenly you disappeared from the town. Then
he gave way to despair altogether, for he fancied that they had got you
married somewhere or other. At any rate, he came to me like a madman and
asked what had become of you. 'I don't know, sir,' said I; 'they took
her away from me long ago. Possibly she is married.' I had no sooner
uttered these words than the young man grew quite pale, and cast himself
on the very sofa which you embroidered, on which is a couple of billing
doves in the middle of a wreath of roses. I was sorry for the poor man,
as he was a fine, handsome young fellow; in fact, I never saw a
handsomer man in my life. What eyebrows! And his face, too, so pale and
refined, a hand like velvet, a beautiful mouth, and a commanding figure.
I cannot get him out of my head. I asked him why he did not make haste
about it if his intentions with regard to you were