he
was telling me, I was thinking of the unfortunate Frederick's wife, of
her anxiety, of the torture she suffered, as a wife and a mother, when
she believed her husband lost and her children ruined; of her
astonishment and wild joy when she saw them all saved; of her deep,
eternal gratitude! and I had but one thought, I said to myself: "How I
would like to talk with this woman of Raymond!"

I wished in turn to relate my own history; he refused to listen to me,
and I did not insist. I wished to be generous, and let him for some time
longer believe me to be poor and miserable. He was so happy at the idea
of enriching and ennobling me, that I had not the courage to disenchant
him.

However, yesterday, I was obliged to tell him everything; in his
impatience to hasten our marriage he had devoted the morning to the
drawing up of his papers, contracts and settlements; for two days he had
been tormenting me for my family papers in order to arrange them, and to
find the register of my birth, which was indispensable when he appeared
before the mayor. I had always put off giving it to him, but yesterday
he entreated me so earnestly, that I was compelled to assent. In order
to prepare him for the shock, I told him my papers were in my secretary,
and that if he would come into my room he could see them. At the sight
of the grand family pictures covering the walls of my retreat, he stood
aghast; then he examined them with uneasiness. Some of the portraits
bore the names and titles of the illustrious persons they represented.
Upon reading the name, Victor Louis de Chateaudun, Marechal de France,
he stopped motionless and looked at me with a strange air; then he read,
beneath the portrait of a beautiful woman, the following inscription:
"Marie Felicite Diane de Chateaudun, Duchesse de Montignan," and turning
quickly towards me, with a face deadly pale, he exclaimed: "Louise?"
"No, not Louise, but Irene!" I replied; and my voice rang with ancestral
pride when I thus appeared before him in my true character.

For a moment he was silent, and a bitter, sad expression came over his
countenance, that frightened me. Then I thought, it is nothing but envy;
it is hard for a man who knows he is generous to be outdone in
generosity. It is disappointing, when he thinks he is bestowing
everything, to find he is about to receive millions; it is cruel, when
he dreams of making a sacrifice like the hero of a novel, to find
himself constrained to d