should be made receiver-general, and you yourself could get him elected deputy.  But, alas! poor ambitious man, my first duty is to silence my ambition.  Knowing myself at the bottom of the bag like the last number in a family lottery, I can only offer you my arm and not my heart.  I hope all from a good marriage, and, believe me, I shall make my wife not only happy, but I shall make her one of the first in the land, receiving from her the means of success.  It is so fine a day, will you not take a turn in the Luxembourg?” he added, as they reached the rue d’Enfer at the corner of Colleville’s house, opposite to which was a passage leading to the gardens by the stairway of a little building, the last remains of the famous convent of the Chartreux.

The soft yielding of the arm within his own, indicated a tacit consent to this proposal, and as Flavie deserved the honor of a sort of enthusiasm, he drew her vehemently along, exclaiming:—­

“Come! we may never have so good a moment—­But see!” he added, “there is your husband at the window looking at us; let us walk slowly.”

“You have nothing to fear from Monsieur Colleville,” said Flavie, smiling; “he leaves me mistress of my own actions.”

“Ah! here, indeed, is the woman I have dreamed of,” cried the Provencal, with that ecstasy that inflames the soul only, and in tones that issue only from Southern lips.  “Pardon me, madame,” he said, recovering himself, and returning from an upper sphere to the exiled angel whom he looked at piously,—­“pardon me, I abandon what I was saying; but how can a man help feeling for the sorrows he has known himself when he sees them the lot of a being to whom life should bring only joy and happiness?  Your sufferings are mine; I am no more in my right place than you are in yours; the same misfortune has made us brother and sister.  Ah! dear Flavie, the first day it was granted to me to see you—­the last Sunday in September, 1838—­you were very beautiful; I shall often recall you to memory in that pretty little gown of mousseline-de-laine of the color of some Scottish tartan!  That day I said to myself:  ‘Why is that woman so often at the Thuilliers’; above all, why did she ever have intimate relations with Thuillier himself?—­’”

“Monsieur!” said Flavie, alarmed at the singular course la Peyrade was giving to the conversation.

“Eh!  I know all,” he cried, accompanying the words with a shrug of his shoulders.  “I explain it all to my own mind, and I do not respect you less.  You now have to gather the fruits of your sin, and I will help you.  Celeste will be very rich, and in that lies your own future.  You can have only one son-in-law; chose him wisely.  An ambitious man might become a minister, but you would humble your daughter and make her miserable; and if such a man lost his place and fortune he could never recover it.  Yes, I love you,” he continued.  “I love you with an unlimited affection; you are far above the mass of petty considerations in which silly women entangle themselves.  Let us understand each other.”