“And she, too, would be happy.  Never, by word or look, would he wound the tender heart which abandoned itself to him, with the blind trust of a child reposing in its mother’s arms.  For were the vision shattered, it would be the wreck of her inner life.  To the mighty waters of love she would confide her all!

“The man I picture must belong, in expression, in attitude, in gait, in his way of performing alike the smallest and the greatest actions, to that race of the truly great who are always simple and natural.  He need not be good-looking, but his hands must be beautiful.  His upper lip will curl with a careless, ironic smile for the general public, whilst he reserves for those he loves the heavenly, radiant glance in which he puts his soul.”

“Will mademoiselle allow me,” he said in Spanish, in a voice full of agitation, “to keep this writing in memory of her?  This is the last lesson I shall have the honor of giving her, and that which I have just received in these words may serve me for an abiding rule of life.  I left Spain, a fugitive and penniless, but I have to-day received from my family a sum sufficient for my needs.  You will allow me to send some poor Spaniard in my place.”

In other words, he seemed to me to say, “This little game must stop.”  He rose with an air of marvelous dignity, and left me quite upset by such unheard-of delicacy in a man of his class.  He went downstairs and asked to speak with my father.

At dinner my father said to me with a smile: 

“Louise, you have been learning Spanish from an ex-minister and a man condemned to death.”

“The Duc de Soria,” I said.

“Duke!” replied my father.  “No, he is not that any longer; he takes the title now of Baron de Macumer from a property which still remains to him in Sardinia.  He is something of an original, I think.”

“Don’t brand with that word, which with you always implies some mockery and scorn, a man who is your equal, and who, I believe, has a noble nature.”

“Baronne de Macumer?” exclaimed my father, with a laughing glance at me.

Pride kept my eyes fixed on the table.

“But,” said my mother, “Henarez must have met the Spanish ambassador on the steps?”

“Yes,” replied my father, “the ambassador asked me if I was conspiring against the King, his master; but he greeted the ex-grandee of Spain with much deference, and placed his services at his disposal.”

All this, dear, Mme. de l’Estorade, happened a fortnight ago, and it is a fortnight now since I have seen the man who loves me, for that he loves me there is not a doubt.  What is he about?  If only I were a fly, or a mouse, or a sparrow!  I want to see him alone, myself unseen, at his house.  Only think, a man exists, to whom I can say, “Go and die for me!” And he is so made that he would go, at least I think so.  Anyhow, there is in Paris a man who occupies my thoughts, and whose glance pours sunshine into my soul.  Is not such a man an enemy, whom I ought to trample under foot?  What?  There is a man who has become necessary to me—­a man without whom I don’t know how to live!  You married, and I—­in love!  Four little months, and those two doves, whose wings erst bore them so high, have fluttered down upon the flat stretches of real life!