venged on all happiness in which it has no share. Yes, I
shall always be a mark for envy--did you not see that last night? The
bloodthirsty insects are quick enough to drain every wound that
they pierce. But I was happy; I lived. It is so long since all my
heartstrings vibrated."

The tears flowed fast, and for all answer Lucien took Louise's hand and
gave it a lingering kiss. Every one about him soothed and caressed the
poet's vanity; his mother and his sister and David and Louise now did
the same. Every one helped to raise the imaginary pedestal on which
he had set himself. His friends's kindness and the fury of his enemies
combined to establish him more firmly in an unreal world. A young
imagination readily falls in with the flattering estimates of others, a
handsome young fellow so full of promise finds others eager to help him
on every side, and only after one or two sharp and bitter lessons does
he begin to see himself as an ordinary mortal.

"My beautiful Louise, do you mean in very truth to be my Beatrice, a
Beatrice who condescends to be loved?"

Louise raised the fine eyes, hitherto down-dropped.

"If you show yourself worthy--some day!" she said, with an angelic smile
which belied her words. "Are you not happy? To be the sole possessor
of a heart, to speak freely at all times, with the certainty of being
understood, is not this happiness?"

"Yes," he answered, with a lover's pout of vexation.

"Child!" she exclaimed, laughing at him. "Come, you have something to
tell me, have you not? You came in absorbed in thought, my Lucien."

Lucien, in fear and trembling, confided to his beloved that David was
in love with his sister Eve, and that his sister Eve was in love with
David, and that the two were to be married shortly.

"Poor Lucien!" said Louise, "he was afraid he should be beaten and
scolded, as if it was he himself that was going to be married! Why,
where is the harm?" she continued, her fingers toying with Lucien's
hair. "What is your family to me when you are an exception? Suppose that
my father were to marry his cook, would that trouble you much? Dear boy,
lovers are for each other their whole family. Have I a greater interest
than my Lucien in the world? Be great, find the way to win fame, that is
our affair!"

This selfish answer made Lucien the happiest of mortals. But in the
middle of the fantastic reasonings, with which Louise convinced him that
they two were alone in the world, in came M.