Savarus, and so revive
in France a good name now extinct in Belgium--though indeed I am
neither legitimate nor legitimized."

"Ah! I knew it! He is of noble birth!" exclaimed Rosalie, dropping the
letter.

"You know how conscientiously I studied, how faithful and useful I
was as an obscure journalist, and how excellent a secretary to the
statesman who, on his part, was true to me in 1829. Flung to the
depths once more by the revolution of July just when my name was
becoming known, at the very moment when, as Master of Appeals, I
was about to find my place as a necessary wheel in the political
machine, I committed the blunder of remaining faithful to the
fallen, and fighting for them, without them. Oh! why was I but
three-and-thirty, and why did I not apply to you to make me
eligible? I concealed from you all my devotedness and my dangers.
What would you have? I was full of faith. We should not have
agreed.

"Ten months ago, when you saw me so gay and contented, writing my
political articles, I was in despair; I foresaw my fate, at the
age of thirty-seven, with two thousand francs for my whole
fortune, without the smallest fame, just having failed in a noble
undertaking, the founding, namely, of a daily paper answering only
to a need of the future instead of appealing to the passions of
the moment. I did not know which way to turn, and I felt my own
value! I wandered about, gloomy and hurt, through the lonely
places of Paris--Paris which had slipped through my fingers
--thinking of my crushed ambitions, but never giving them up. Oh,
what frantic letters I wrote at that time to _her_, my second
conscience, my other self! Sometimes I would say to myself, 'Why
did I sketch so vast a programme of life? Why demand everything?
Why not wait for happiness while devoting myself to some
mechanical employment.'

"I then looked about me for some modest appointment by which I
might live. I was about to get the editorship of a paper under a
manager who did not know much about it, a man of wealth and
ambition, when I took fright. 'Would _she_ ever accept as her
husband a man who had stooped so low?' I wondered.

"This reflection made me two-and-twenty again. But, oh, my dear
Leopold, how the soul is worn by these perplexities! What must not
the caged eagles suffer, and imprisoned lions!--They suffer what
Napoleon suffered, not at Saint Helena, but on t