ich he took his leave.

"I should like to be that little young man," said the critic, sitting
down, and taking one end of the hookah. "How he will love!"

"Too much; for then he will not be loved in return," replied
Mademoiselle des Touches. "Madame de Rochefide is coming here," she
added.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Claude. "With Conti?"

"She will stay here alone, but he accompanies her."

"Have they quarrelled?"

"No."

"Play me a sonata of Beethoven's; I know nothing of the music he wrote
for the piano."

Claude began to fill the tube of the hookah with Turkish tobacco, all
the while examining Camille much more attentively than she observed. A
dreadful thought oppressed him; he fancied he was being used for a blind
by this woman. The situation was a novel one.

Calyste went home thinking no longer of Beatrix de Rochefide and her
letter; he was furious against Claude Vignon for what he considered the
utmost indelicacy, and he pitied poor Felicite. How was it possible to
be beloved by that sublime creature and not adore her on his knees, not
believe her on the faith of a glance or a smile? He felt a desire to
turn and rend that cold, pale spectre of a man. Ignorant he might be,
as Felicite had told him, of the tricks of thought of the jesters of the
press, but one thing he knew--Love was the human religion.

When his mother saw him entering the court-yard she uttered an
exclamation of joy, and Zephirine whistled for Mariotte.

"Mariotte, the boy is coming! cook the fish!"

"I see him, mademoiselle," replied the woman.

Fanny, uneasy at the sadness she saw on her son's brow, picked up her
worsted-work; the old aunt took out her knitting. The baron gave his
arm-chair to his son and walked about the room, as if to stretch his
legs before going out to take a turn in the garden. No Flemish or Dutch
picture ever presented an interior in tones more mellow, peopled with
faces and forms so harmoniously blending. The handsome young man in his
black velvet coat, the mother, still so beautiful, and the aged brother
and sister framed by that ancient hall, were a moving domestic harmony.

Fanny would fain have questioned Calyste, but he had already pulled a
letter from his pocket,--that letter of the Marquise Beatrix, which was,
perhaps, destined to destroy the happiness of this noble family. As
he unfolded it, Calyste's awakened imagination showed him the marquise
dressed as Camille Maupin had fancifully depict