and humane.”  Then, after a pause, Adrienne continued, with such deep and sweet emotion, that a tear of tenderness veiled her beauteous eyes:  “Oh! if you knew, my love, what your love is to me:  if you knew how dear and sacred I hold your happiness—­you would excuse, you would understand, these generous superstitions of a loving and honest heart, which could only see a fatal omen in forms degraded by falsehood and perjury.  What I wish, is, to attach you by love, to bind you in chains of happiness—­and to leave you free, that I may owe your constancy only to your affection.”

Djalma had listened to the young girl with passionate attention.  Proud and generous himself, he admired this proud and generous character.  After a moment’s meditative silence, he answered, in his sweet, sonorous voice, in an almost solemn tone:  “Like you, I hold in detestation, falsehood and perjury.  Like you, I think that man degrades himself, by accepting the right of being a cowardly tyrant, even though resolved never to use the power.  Like you, I could not bear the thought, that I owed all I most valued, not to your love alone, but to the eternal constraint of an indissoluble bond.  Like you, I believe there is no dignity but in freedom.  But you have said, that, for this great and holy love, you demand a religious consecration; and if you reject vows, that you cannot make without folly and perjury, are there then others, which your reason and your heart approve?—­Who will pronounce the required blessing?  To whom must these vows be spoken?”

“In a few days, my love, I believe I shall be able to tell you all.  Every evening, after your departure, I have no other thought.  I wish to find the means of uniting yourself and me—­in the eyes of God, not of the law—­without offending the habits and prejudices of a world, in which it may suit us hereafter to live.  Yes, my friend! when you know whose are the noble hands, that are to join ours together, who is to bless and glorify God in our union—­a sacred union, that will leave us worthy and free—­you will say, I am sure, that never purer hands could have been laid upon us.  Forgive me, friend! all this is in earnest—­yes, earnest as our love, earnest as our happiness.  If my words seem to you strange, my thoughts unreasonable, tell it me, love!  We will seek and find some better means, to reconcile that we owe to heaven, with what we owe to the world and to ourselves.  It is said, that lovers are beside themselves,” added the young lady, with a smile, “but I think that no creatures are more reasonable.”

“When I hear you speak thus of our happiness,” said Djalma, deeply moved, “with so much calm and earnest tenderness, I think I see a mother occupied with the future prospects of her darling child—­trying to surround him with all that can make him strong, valiant, and generous—­trying to remove far from him all that is ignoble and unworthy.  You ask me to tell you if your thoughts seem strange