might be happiness on earth, of which I had hitherto never dreamed.  Then I loved for the first time, ardently, passionately, and was beloved in return.  Acquainted with the family engagements, he did not dare openly to proclaim his love, and I knew I ought not to foster the feeling; but, alas! how seldom does passion listen to the voice of reason and of duty.  Your friend and I met in secret; in secret we plighted our troth, and exchanged those rings, and hoped and believed that by showing a bold front to our destiny we should subdue it to our will.  The commencement was sinful, it has met with a dire retribution, Jules’s letters announced his speedy return.  He had sold everything in his own country, had given up all his mercantile affairs, through which he had greatly increased an already considerable fortune, and now he was about to join us, or rather me, without whom he could not live.  This appeared to me like the demand for payment of a heavy debt.  This debt I owed to Jules, who loved me with all his heart, who was in possession of my father’s promised word and mine also.  Yet I could not give up your friend.  In a state of distraction I told him all; we meditated flight.  Yes, I was so far guilty, and I make the confession in hopes that some portion of my errors may be expiated by repentance.  My father, who had long been in a declining state, suddenly grew worse, and this delayed and hindered the fulfillment of our designs.  Jules arrived.  During the five years he had been away he was much changed in appearance, and that advantageously.  I was struck when I first saw him, but it was also easy to detect in those handsome features and manly bearing, a spirit of restlessness and violence which had already shown itself in him as a boy, and which passing years, with their bitter experience and strong passions, had greatly developed.  The hope that we had cherished of D’Effernay’s possible indifference to me, of the change which time might have wrought in his attachment, now seemed idle and absurd.  His love was indeed impassioned.  He embraced me in a manner that made me shrink from him, and altogether his deportment toward me was a strange contrast to the gentle, tender, refined affection of our dear friend.  I trembled whenever Jules entered the room, and all that I had prepared to say to him, all the plans which I had revolved in my mind respecting him, vanished in an instant before the power of his presence, and the almost imperative manner in which he claimed my hand.  My father’s illness increased; he was now in a very precarious state, hopeless indeed.  Jules rivaled me in filial attentions to him, that I can never cease to thank him for; but this illness made my situation more and more critical, and it accelerated the fulfillment of the contract.  I was now to renew my promise to him by the death-bed of my father.  Alas, alas!  I fell senseless to the ground when this announcement was made to me.  Jules began to suspect.  Already my cold, embarrassed manner toward him since his return