“Yes, madame.”

“I made his happiness?”

“For four years.”

“A woman never hears of such a thing without a sentiment of proud satisfaction,” she said, turning her sweet and noble face to d’Arthez with a movement full of modest confusion.

One of the most skilful manoeuvres of these actresses is to veil their manner when words are too expressive, and speak with their eyes when language is restrained.  These clever discords, slipped into the music of their love, be it false or true, produce irresistible attractions.

“Is it not,” she said, lowering her voice and her eyes, after feeling well assured they had produced her effect,—­“is it not fulfilling one’s destiny to have rendered a great man happy?”

“Did he not write that to you?”

“Yes; but I wanted to be sure, quite sure; for, believe me, monsieur, in putting me so high he was not mistaken.”

Women know how to give a peculiar sacredness to their words; they communicate something vibrant to them, which extends the meaning of their ideas, and gives them depth; though later their fascinated listener may not remember precisely what they said, their end has been completely attained,—­which is the object of all eloquence.  The princess might at that moment have been wearing the diadem of France, and her brow could not have seemed more imposing than it was beneath that crown of golden hair, braided like a coronet, and adorned with heather.  She was simple and calm; nothing betrayed a sense of any necessity to appear so, nor any desire to seem grand or loving.  D’Arthez, the solitary toiler, to whom the ways of the world were unknown, whom study had wrapped in its protecting veils, was the dupe of her tones and words.  He was under the spell of those exquisite manners; he admired that perfect beauty, ripened by misfortune, placid in retirement; he adored the union of so rare a mind and so noble a soul; and he longed to become, himself, the heir of Michel Chrestien.

The beginning of this passion was, as in the case of almost all deep thinkers, an idea.  Looking at the princess, studying the shape of her head, the arrangement of those sweet features, her figure, her hand, so finely modelled, closer than when he accompanied his friend in their wild rush through the streets, he was struck by the surprising phenomenon of the moral second-sight which a man exalted by love invariably finds within him.  With what lucidity had Michel Chrestien read into that soul, that heart, illumined by the fires of love!  Thus the princess acquired, in d’Arthez’s eyes, another charm; a halo of poesy surrounded her.