However, yesterday, I was obliged to tell him everything; in his impatience to hasten our marriage he had devoted the morning to the drawing up of his papers, contracts and settlements; for two days he had been tormenting me for my family papers in order to arrange them, and to find the register of my birth, which was indispensable when he appeared before the mayor.  I had always put off giving it to him, but yesterday he entreated me so earnestly, that I was compelled to assent.  In order to prepare him for the shock, I told him my papers were in my secretary, and that if he would come into my room he could see them.  At the sight of the grand family pictures covering the walls of my retreat, he stood aghast; then he examined them with uneasiness.  Some of the portraits bore the names and titles of the illustrious persons they represented.  Upon reading the name, Victor Louis de Chateaudun, Marechal de France, he stopped motionless and looked at me with a strange air; then he read, beneath the portrait of a beautiful woman, the following inscription:  “Marie Felicite Diane de Chateaudun, Duchesse de Montignan,” and turning quickly towards me, with a face deadly pale, he exclaimed:  “Louise?” “No, not Louise, but Irene!” I replied; and my voice rang with ancestral pride when I thus appeared before him in my true character.

For a moment he was silent, and a bitter, sad expression came over his countenance, that frightened me.  Then I thought, it is nothing but envy; it is hard for a man who knows he is generous to be outdone in generosity.  It is disappointing, when he thinks he is bestowing everything, to find he is about to receive millions; it is cruel, when he dreams of making a sacrifice like the hero of a novel, to find himself constrained to destroy all the romance by conducting the affair on a business basis.  But Raymond was more than sad, and his almost severe demeanor alarmed my love, as well as my dignity ... he crossed to the other side of the room and sat down.  I followed him, trembling with agitation, and my eyes filled with tears.

“You no longer love me,” I said.

“I dare not love the fiancee of my friend.”

“Don’t mention M. de Monbert, nor your scruples, he would not understand them.”

“But he told you he loved you, Mlle., why did you leave him so abruptly?”

“I distrusted this love and wished to test it.”

“What is the result of the test?”

“He does not love me, and I despise him.”

“He does love you, and you ought to respect him.”

Then, in order to avoid painful explanations and self-justification, I handed him a long letter I had written to my cousin, in which I related, without telling her of my disguise, that I had seen the Prince de Monbert at the theatre, described the people whom he was with, and my disgust at his conduct.  I begged her to read this letter to the Prince himself, who is with her now—­he has followed her to one of her estates in Brittany; he would see from the decided tone of my letter, that my resolution was taken, that I did not love him, and that the best thing he could do was to forget me.