udge, "there is a love which is
unconfessed before men, but of which the secret is received by the
angels with smiles of gladness."

"What is that?"

"Love without hope, when it inspires our life, when it fills us with
the spirit of sacrifice, when it ennobles every act by the thought of
reaching some ideal perfection. Yes, the angels approve of such love;
it leads to the knowledge of God. To aim at perfection in order to
be worthy of the one you love, to make for him a thousand secret
sacrifices, adoring him from afar, giving your blood drop by drop,
abnegating your self-love, never feeling any pride or anger as regards
him, even concealing from him all knowledge of the dreadful jealousy he
fires in your heart, giving him all he wishes were it to your own loss,
loving what he loves, always turning your face to him to follow him
without his knowing it--such love as that religion would have forgiven;
it is no offence to laws human or divine, and would have led you into
another road than that of your foul voluptuousness."

As she heard this horrible verdict, uttered in a word--and such a word!
and spoken in such a tone!--Esther's spirit rose up in fairly legitimate
distrust. This word was like a thunder-clap giving warning of a storm
about to break. She looked at the priest, and felt the grip on her
vitals which wrings the bravest when face to face with sudden and
imminent danger. No eye could have read what was passing in this man's
mind; but the boldest would have found more to quail at than to hope for
in the expression of his eyes, once bright and yellow like those of a
tiger, but now shrouded, from austerities and privations, with a haze
like that which overhangs the horizon in the dog-days, when, though the
earth is hot and luminous, the mist makes it indistinct and dim--almost
invisible.

The gravity of a Spaniard, the deep furrows which the myriad scars of
virulent smallpox made hideously like broken ruts, were ploughed into
his face, which was sallow and tanned by the sun. The hardness of this
countenance was all the more conspicuous, being framed in the meagre
dry wig of a priest who takes no care of his person, a black wig looking
rusty in the light. His athletic frame, his hands like an old soldier's,
his broad, strong shoulders were those of the Caryatides which the
architects of the Middle Ages introduced into some Italian palaces,
remotely imitated in those of the front of the Porte-Saint-Martin
theatr