Amongst the persons who smiled more or less at the conversion of Madame de Saint-Dizier were the young and charming couple whom she had so cruelly disunited before she quitted forever the scenes of revelry in which she had lived.  The young couple became more impassioned and devoted to each other than ever; they were reconciled and married, after the passing storm which had hurled them asunder; and they indulged in no other vengeance against the author of their temporary infelicity than that of mildly jesting at the pious conversion of the woman who had done them so much injury.

Some time after, a terrible fatality overtook the loving pair.  The husband, until then blindly unsuspicious, was suddenly inflamed by anonymous communications.  A dreadful rupture ensued, and the young wife perished.

As for the husband, certain vague rumors, far from distinct, yet pregnant with secret meanings, perfidiously contrived, and a thousand times more detestable than formal accusations, which can, at least, be met and destroyed, were strewn about him with so much perseverance, with a skill so diabolical, and by means and ways so very various, that his best friends, by little and little, withdrew themselves from him, thus yielding to the slow, irresistible influence of that incessant whispering and buzzing, confused as indistinct, amounting to some such results as this-"Well! you know!” says one.

“No!” replies another.

“People say very vile things about him.”

“Do they? really!  What then?”

“I don’t know!  Bad reports!  Rumors grievously affecting his honor!”

“The deuce!  That’s very serious.  It accounts for the coldness with which he is now everywhere received!”

“I shall avoid him in future!”

“So will I,” etc.

Such is the world, that very often nothing more than groundless surmises are necessary to brand a man whose very, happiness may have incurred envy.  So it was with the gentleman of whom we speak.  The unfortunate man, seeing the void around him extending itself,—­feeling (so to speak) the earth crumbling from beneath his feet, knew not where to find or grasp the impalpable enemy whose blows he felt; for not once had the idea occurred to him of suspecting the princess, whom he had not seen since his adventure with her.  Anxiously desiring to learn why he was so much shunned and despised, he at length sought an explanation from an old friend; but he received only a disdainfully evasive answer; at which, being exasperated, he demanded satisfaction.  His adversary replied—­“If you can find two persons of our acquaintance, I will fight you!” The unhappy man could not find one!

Finally, forsaken by all, without having ever obtained an explanation of the reason for forsaking him—­suffering keenly for the fate of the wife whom he had lost, he became mad with grief, rage, and despair, and killed himself.