“Frankly, mon cher,” said Lucan, “you seem to exaggerate your disasters greatly.  In reality they seem to amount to very little.  In the first place, you are seriously in love for the first time in your life, I think; you had heard a great deal said about love, about passion, and perhaps you were expecting of them excessive wonders.  In the second place, I must beg you to observe that very young women are rarely very passionate.  The sort of coolness of which you complain is therefore quite easy to explain without the intervention of anything supernatural.  Young women, I repeat, are generally idealists; their love has no substance.  You ask of whom or of what you should be jealous?  Be jealous, then, of all those vague and romantic aspirations that torment youthful imaginations; be jealous of the wind, of the tempest, of the barren moors, of the rugged cliffs, of my old manor, of my words and of my ruins—­for Julia adores all that.  Be jealous, above all, of that ardent worship she has avowed to her father’s memory, and which still absorbs her—­I have lately had a proof of the fact—­the keenest of her passion.”

“You do me good,” rejoined Pierre de Moras, breathing more freely, “and yet I had already thought of all these things.  But if she does not love now, she will some day—­and suppose it should not be me!  Were she to bestow upon another all that she refuses me! my friend,” added the count, whose handsome features turned pale, “I would kill her with my own hand!”

“So much for being in love,” said Lucan; “and I, am I nothing more to you, then?”

“You, my friend,” said Moras with emotion, “you see my confidence in you!  I have revealed to you weaknesses of which I am ashamed.  Ah! why have I ever known any other feeling than that of friendship!  Friendship alone returns as much as it receives; it fortifies instead of enervating; it is the only passion worthy of a man.  Never forsake me, my friend; you will console me, whatever may happen.”

The bell that was ringing for breakfast called them back to the chateau.  Julia pretended being tired and ailing.  Under shelter of this pretext, her silent humor, her more than dry answers to Lucan’s polite questions, passed at first without awakening either her mother’s or her husband’s attention; but during the remainder of the day, and amid the various incidents of family life, Julia’s aggressive tone and disagreeable manners toward Lucan became too strongly marked not to be noticed.  However, as Lucan had the patience and good taste not to seem to notice them, each one kept his own impressions to himself.  The dinner was, that day, more quiet than usual.  The conversation fell, toward the end of the meal, upon extremely delicate ground, and it was Julia who brought it there, though, however, without the least thought of evil.  She was exhausting her mocking verve upon a little boy of eight or ten—­the son of the Marchioness de Boisfresnay—­who had annoyed her extremely the night before, by parading through the ball his own pretentious little person, and by throwing himself pleasantly like a top between the legs of the gentlemen and through the dresses of the ladies.  The marchioness went into ecstasies at these charming pranks.  Clotilde defended her mildly, alleging that this child was her only son.