“Paupers, Jacintha?”

“Ay, paupers! their debts are greater than their means.  They live here by sufferance.  They have only their old clothes to wear.  They have hardly enough to eat.  Just now our cow is in full milk, you know; so that is a great help:  but, when she goes dry, Heaven knows what we shall do; for I don’t.  But that is not the worst; better a light meal than a broken heart.  Your precious government offers the chateau for sale.  They might as well send for the guillotine at once, and cut off all our heads.  You don’t know my mistress as I do.  Ah, butchers, you will drag nothing out of that but her corpse.  And is it come to this? the great old family to be turned adrift like beggars.  My poor mistress! my pretty demoiselles that I played with and nursed ever since I was a child! (I was just six when Josephine was born) and that I shall love with my last breath”—­

She could say no more, but choked by the strong feeling so long pent up in her own bosom, fell to sobbing hysterically, and trembling like one in an ague.

The statesman, who had passed all his short life at school and college, was frightened, and took hold of her and pulled her, and cried, “Oh! don’t, Jacintha; you will kill yourself, you will die; this is frightful:  help here! help!” Jacintha put her hand to his mouth, and, without leaving off her hysterics, gasped out, “Ah! don’t expose me.”  So then he didn’t know what to do; but he seized a tumbler and filled it with wine, and forced it between her lips.  All she did was to bite a piece out of the glass as clean as if a diamond had cut it.  This did her a world of good:  destruction of sacred household property gave her another turn.  “There, I’ve broke your glass now,” she cried, with a marvellous change of tone; and she came-to and cried quietly like a reasonable person, with her apron to her eyes.

When Edouard saw she was better, he took her hand and said proudly, “Secret for secret.  I choose this moment to confide to you that I love Mademoiselle Rose de Beaurepaire.  Love her?  I did love her; but now you tell me she is poor and in distress, I adore her.”  The effect of this declaration on Jacintha was magical, comical.  Her apron came down from one eye, and that eye dried itself and sparkled with curiosity:  the whole countenance speedily followed suit and beamed with sacred joy.  What! an interesting love affair confided to her all in a moment!  She lowered her voice to a whisper directly.  “Why, how did you manage?  She never goes into company.”

“No; but she goes to church.  Besides, I have met her eleven times out walking with her sister, and twice out of the eleven she smiled on me.  O Jacintha! a smile such as angels smile; a smile to warm the heart and purify the soul and last forever in the mind.”

“Well, they say ‘man is fire and woman tow:’  but this beats all.  Ha! ha!”