s old was with them, a blue-eyed,
fair-haired child--very beautiful, and as much like her father as a
little girl can be like a man approaching fifty. I was not surprised to
see that she was, as her mother said, "une petite fille gatee." I
inquired for Leonie.

"Can you believe that Leonie has not been in Paris since you saw her
here?" replied her father. "She is a thorough little provincial. She has
been married more than a year now."

"Ah, I congratulate you! I hope her marriage was pleasing to you," I
added, as he did not respond immediately.

"Assez. Her husband is a very worthy young man for a
provincial--Theophile Dupres, the brother of a little school-friend of
hers. I went down to the wedding, not to grieve Leonie, but I shall
never be reconciled to it--never! To think what that girl threw away!
Such talent! and to have it lost, utterly lost! It is inexplicable.
Every motive that could influence a girl on the one hand, and--But I
give it up. Let us not talk of it," he concluded with a little wave of
his hand, as if dismissing Leonie and all that pertained to her.

But I could not turn my thoughts from her so quickly. Even now, when I
am, so to speak, in another world, she causes me not a little
perplexity. Was she right? was she wrong? Can one ever be happy in
suppressing a great talent? How it strives and agonizes for some
manifestation of itself! and when it slowly dies, stifled in its living
grave, must not one feel a bitter regret for having slain the nobler
part of one's self?

But is it not heresy to doubt that a woman can sacrifice genius for
love, and be content--yea, glad--with an infinite joy? And why not have
love and genius too? Alas! most lives are opaque planets, like the earth
on which they are evolved, and can have only one bright side at a time.

Madame Regnault was little changed: she preserved the old sweet
gentleness and quiet refinement of manner, but she seemed more at ease
with her husband, and did not watch so timidly his least gesture.
Colonel--or rather General--Regnault had changed more. He had grown
quite gray: he was still a handsome, high-bred gentleman, with the same
exquisite urbanity of manner, but the disappointment of his ambition for
Leonie, the anguish which had smitten him for his children's death, and
the great calamity which had almost crushed France, the idol of every
Frenchman, had softened and humanized him. He was less like an Apollo
exulting in his own divinity