On the 5th, when the Signor Gismondo Pulei presented himself at Rue St. Gilles, his face bore such an expression of anguish, that Mlle. Gilberte could not help asking what was the matter.

He rose on that question, and, threatening heaven with his clinched fist,

“Implacable fate does not tire to persecute me,” he replied.  “I had overcome all obstacles:  I was happy:  I was looking forward to a future of fortune and glory.  No, the dreadful war must break out.”

For the worthy maestro, this terrible catastrophe was but a new caprice of his own destiny.

“What has happened to you?” inquired the young girl, repressing a smile.

“It happens to me, signora, that I am about to lose my beloved pupil.  He leaves me; he forsakes me.  In vain have I thrown myself at his feet.  My tears have not been able to detain him.  He is going to fight; he leaves; he is a soldier!”

Then it was given to Mlle. Gilberte to see clearly within her soul.  Then she understood how absolutely she had given herself up, and to what extent she had ceased to belong to herself.

Her sensation was terrible, such as if her whole blood had suddenly escaped through her open arteries.  She turned pale, her teeth chattered; and she seemed so near fainting, that the Signor Gismondo sprang to the door, crying, “Help, help! she is dying.”

Mme. Favoral, frightened, came running in.  But already, thanks to an all-powerful projection of will, Mlle. Gilberte had recovered, and, smiling a pale smile,

“It’s nothing, mamma,” she said.  “A sudden pain in the head; but it’s gone already.”

The worthy maestro was in perfect agony.  Taking Mme. Favoral aside,

“It is my fault,” he said.  “It is the story of my unheard-of misfortunes that has upset her thus.  Monstrous egotist that I am!  I should have been careful of her exquisite sensibility.”

She insisted, nevertheless, upon taking her lesson as usual, and recovered enough presence of mind to extract from the Signor Gismondo everything that his much-regretted pupil had confided to him.

That was not much.  He knew that his pupil had gone, like anyone else, to Rue de Cherche Midi; that he had signed an engagement; and had been ordered to join a regiment in process of formation near Tours.  And, as he went out,

“That is nothing,” said the kind maestro to Mme. Favoral.  “The signora has quite recovered, and is as gay as a lark.”

The signora, shut up in her room, was shedding bitter tears.  She tried to reason with herself, and could not succeed.  Never had the strangeness of her situation so clearly appeared to her.  She repeated to herself that she must be mad to have thus become attached to a stranger.  She wondered how she could have allowed that love, which was now her very life, to take possession of her soul.  But to what end?  It no longer rested with her to undo what had been done.