other will not second you, our family, above all my mother,
who has a genius for the management of life, will help you. Profit by
our influence; you will never be without support in whatever career you
choose; put the strength of your desires into a noble ambition--"

"I understand you," I said, interrupting her; "ambition is to be my
mistress. I have no need of that to be wholly yours. No, I will not be
rewarded for my obedience here by receiving favors there. I will go;
I will make my own way; I will rise alone. From you I would accept
everything, from others nothing."

"Child!" she murmured, ill-concealing a smile of pleasure.

"Besides, I have taken my vows," I went on. "Thinking over our situation
I am resolved to bind myself to you by ties that never can be broken."

She trembled slightly and stopped short to look at me.

"What do you mean?" she asked, letting the couples who preceded us walk
on, and keeping the children at her side.

"This," I said; "but first tell me frankly how you wish me to love you."

"Love me as my aunt loved me; I gave you her rights when I permitted you
to call me by the name which she chose for her own among my others."

"Then I am to love without hope and with an absolute devotion. Well,
yes; I will do for you what some men do for God. I shall feel that you
have asked it. I will enter a seminary and make myself a priest, and
then I will educate your son. Jacques shall be myself in his own form;
political conceptions, thoughts, energy, patience, I will give him all.
In that way I shall live near to you, and my love, enclosed in religion
as a silver image in a crystal shrine, can never be suspected of evil.
You will not have to fear the undisciplined passions which grasp a man
and by which already I have allowed myself to be vanquished. I will
consume my own being in the flame, and I will love you with a purified
love."

She turned pale and said, hurrying her words: "Felix, do not put
yourself in bonds that might prove an obstacle to our happiness. I
should die of grief for having caused a suicide like that. Child, do you
think despairing love a life's vocation? Wait for life's trials before
you judge of life; I command it. Marry neither the Church nor a woman;
marry not at all,--I forbid it. Remain free. You are twenty-one years
old--My God! can I have mistaken him? I thought two months sufficed to
know some souls."

"What hope have you?" I cried, with fire in my eyes.

"My f