igured by any convulsion or by a ridiculous position.

"Madame de Serizy has quarreled with you, I know, because of me;
but when she hears that I am dead, you see, dear pet, she will
forgive. Make it up with her, and she will find you a suitable
wife if the Grandlieus persist in their refusal.

"My dear, I do not want you to grieve too much when you hear of my
death. To begin with, I must tell you that the hour of eleven on
Monday morning, the thirteenth of May, is only the end of a long
illness, which began on the day when, on the Terrace of
Saint-Germain, you threw me back on my former line of life. The soul
may be sick, as the body is. But the soul cannot submit stupidly to
suffering like the body; the body does not uphold the soul as the
soul upholds the body, and the soul sees a means of cure in the
reflection which leads to the needlewoman's resource--the bushel
of charcoal. You gave me a whole life the day before yesterday,
when you said that if Clotilde still refused you, you would marry
me. It would have been a great misfortune for us both; I should
have been still more dead, so to speak--for there are more and
less bitter deaths. The world would never have recognized us.

"For two months past I have been thinking of many things, I can
tell you. A poor girl is in the mire, as I was before I went into
the convent; men think her handsome, they make her serve their
pleasure without thinking any consideration necessary; they pack
her off on foot after fetching her in a carriage; if they do not
spit in her face, it is only because her beauty preserves her from
such indignity; but, morally speaking they do worse. Well, and if
this despised creature were to inherit five or six millions of
francs, she would be courted by princes, bowed to with respect as
she went past in her carriage, and might choose among the oldest
names in France and Navarre. That world which would have cried
Raca to us, on seeing two handsome creatures united and happy,
always did honor to Madame de Stael, in spite of her 'romances in
real life,' because she had two hundred thousand francs a year.
The world, which grovels before money or glory, will not bow down
before happiness or virtue--for I could have done good. Oh! how
many tears I would have dried--as many as I have shed--I believe!
Yes, I would have lived only for you and for charity.

"These are the thoughts tha