of all the responsibilities that
love lays on him while he tastes the sweetness of its joys. He went
along the Quais to see the widest possible space of sky; his heart had
grown in him; he would fain have had the bounds of the firmament and of
earth enlarged. It seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath.
In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love
this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find
absolution for her sins against society in unfailing happiness. Sweet
stirrings of life when life is at the full! The man that is strong
enough to steep his soul in the colour of one emotion, feels infinite
joy as glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime that knows no
diminution of passion to the end; even so it is permitted to certain
mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of God. Love would be naught
without the belief that it would last forever; love grows great
through constancy. It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness,
Montriveau understood passion.

"We belong to each other forever!"

The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his life. He
did not ask whether the Duchess might not change, whether her love might
not last. No, for he had faith. Without that virtue there is no future
for Christianity, and perhaps it is even more necessary to society.
A conception of life as feeling occurred to him for the first time;
hitherto he had lived by action, the most strenuous exertion of human
energies, the physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.

Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain. He had made an appointment at a house not far from the
Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he went thither as if to his
own home. The General's companion chanced to be a man for whom he felt
a kind of repulsion whenever he met him in other houses. This was the
Marquis de Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris
boudoirs. He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous; he set
the fashion to all the young men in Paris. As a man of gallantry, his
success and experience were equally matters of envy; and neither fortune
nor birth was wanting in his case, qualifications which add such lustre
in Paris to a reputation as a leader of fashion.

"Where are you going?" asked M. de Ronquerolles.

"To Mme de Langeais'."

"Ah, true. I forgot that you had allowed her to lime(sp) you. You