“So I did, Dumiger,” she replied; “but I felt nervous and wretched; I could not sleep:  besides, look out, the night is already passed, it is quite morning, and very chilly too,” she said, as she drew her shawl closer round her bosom.

“Yes, you will catch cold, my darling.  Leave me.”

“And you, Dumiger, will you remain here, poring over these volumes, and torturing your brains?  I am sure, that you will succeed far more easily (for I never doubt your success, but lament the price you will have to pay for it), you will succeed far better by giving yourself more rest, and working by day instead of night; your cheek is quite pale.  Dumiger:  now, in your boyhood, you have lines marked on your forehead which in others are the result of pain and toil.  Your eyes have lost—­”

She was about to add, “their brightness,” when as though a sudden ray of light had flashed through them, they gleamed with even more than their wonted intelligence.

“Marguerite, Marguerite,” he exclaimed, clasping her in his arms, “you know not what you are saying.  Look here!” and he rose hurriedly from his seat and drew her toward the window; “do you see that star in the east, how bright it is, that you can even distinguish the ray it sheds from the gray light which breaks from behind those masses of clouds?  By that light I tell you I shall succeed in my most extravagant expectations.  How many anxious nights I have waited for that star!  Until I saw it I had no hope—­now, my hope can scarcely find expression.  I am grateful to Thee, O Providence, for this revelation, for the accomplishment of all my wishes;” and he bowed his head as though in adoration, and almost sank on his knees.

Marguerite looked at him as if she dreaded that his brain was turned.  Dumiger interpreted that look; for what look is there that love cannot interpret?

“No, Marguerite, I am not mad, believe me.  This toil has not yet turned my brain, though it might indeed have done so, for it is sad and hard to labor night after night in pursuit of an object so distant and yet so prized.  You ask me why I labor through the night?  Foolish child! why you must know that the clock for which the city has offered so extravagant a prize, and to obtain which, not I alone, but so many others are wasting their health and squandering their youth—­you must know that this clock is not only to tell the hour of the day, and the month of the year, but to contain within its works the secret of the movements of the heavenly bodies;—­that to obtain this prize they must read the wonders of the skies, and penetrate its mysteries.  It is a wild and fearful study, Marguerite—­a study, the pursuit of which is not calculated by the hands on the dial-plate.  Even now I marvel at the audacity of the men who proposed such a design, and the boldness of those who, like myself, have undertaken to fulfill it.  You cannot imagine, Marguerite, how such contemplations remove one from the world in which we live.  Until I knew you, Marguerite, I cared for and thought of nothing else.”