er she had twice reported Virginie to be
asleep, without a word being uttered in reply to her whispers by either
of her companions, Morin's powers of self-containment gave way.

"'It is hard!' he said.

"'What is hard?' asked Madame Babette, after she had paused for a time,
to enable him to add to, or to finish, his sentence, if he pleased.

"'It is hard for a man to love a woman as I do,' he went on--'I did not
seek to love her, it came upon me before I was aware--before I had ever
thought about it at all, I loved her better than all the world beside.
All my life, before I knew her, seems a dull blank. I neither know nor
care for what I did before then. And now there are just two lives before
me. Either I have her, or I have not. That is all: but that is
everything. And what can I do to make her have me? Tell me, aunt,' and
he caught at Madame Babette's arm, and gave it so sharp a shake, that she
half screamed out, Pierre said, and evidently grew alarmed at her
nephew's excitement.

"'Hush, Victor!' said she. 'There are other women in the world, if this
one will not have you.'

"'None other for me,' he said, sinking back as if hopeless. 'I am plain
and coarse, not one of the scented darlings of the aristocrats. Say that
I am ugly, brutish; I did not make myself so, any more than I made myself
love her. It is my fate. But am I to submit to the consequences of my
fate without a struggle? Not I. As strong as my love is, so strong is
my will. It can be no stronger,' continued he, gloomily. 'Aunt Babette,
you must help me--you must make her love me.' He was so fierce here,
that Pierre said he did not wonder that his mother was frightened.

"'I, Victor!' she exclaimed. 'I make her love you? How can I? Ask me
to speak for you to Mademoiselle Didot, or to Mademoiselle Cauchois even,
or to such as they, and I'll do it, and welcome. But to Mademoiselle de
Crequy, why you don't know the difference! Those people--the old
nobility I mean--why they don't know a man from a dog, out of their own
rank! And no wonder, for the young gentlemen of quality are treated
differently to us from their very birth. If she had you to-morrow, you
would be miserable. Let me alone for knowing the aristocracy. I have
not been a concierge to a duke and three counts for nothing. I tell you,
all your ways are different to her ways.'

"'I would change my "ways," as you call them.'

"'Be reasonable, Victor.'

"'No, I will