What castles in the air he built upon what Madame d’Arlange had said to him!  He would tender his resignation.  He would build on the banks of the Loire, not far from Tours, an enchanting little villa.  He already saw it, with its facade to the rising sun, nestling in the midst of flowers, and shaded with wide-spreading trees.  He furnished this dwelling in the most luxuriant style.  He wished to provide a marvellous casket, worthy the pearl he was about to possess.  For he had not a doubt; not a cloud obscured the horizon made radiant by his hopes, no voice at the bottom of his heart raised itself to cry, “Beware!”

From that day, his visits to the marchioness became more frequent.  He might almost be said to live at her house.  While he preserved his respectful and reserved demeanour towards Claire, he strove assiduously to be something in her life.  True love is ingenious.  He learnt to overcome his timidity, to speak to the well-beloved of his soul, to encourage her to converse with him, to interest her.  He went in quest of all the news, to amuse her.  He read all the new books, and brought to her all that were fit for her to read.

Little by little he succeeded, thanks to the most delicate persistence, in taming this shy young girl.  He began to perceive that her fear of him had almost disappeared, that she no longer received him with the cold and haughty air which had previously kept him at a distance.  He felt that he was insensibly gaining her confidence.  She still blushed when she spoke to him; but she no longer hesitated to address the first word.  She even ventured at times to ask him a question.  If she had heard a play well spoken of and wished to know the subject, M. Daburon would at once go to see it, and commit a complete account of it to writing, which he would send her through the post.  At times she intrusted him with trifling commissions, the execution of which he would not have exchanged for the Russian embassy.

Once he ventured to send her a magnificent bouquet.  She accepted it with an air of uneasy surprise, but begged him not to repeat the offering.

The tears came to his eyes; he left her presence broken-hearted, and the unhappiest of men.  “She does not love me,” thought he, “she will never love me.”  But, three days after, as he looked very sad, she begged him to procure her certain flowers, then very much in fashion, which she wished to place on her flower-stand.  He sent enough to fill the house from the garret to the cellar.  “She will love me,” he whispered to himself in his joy.

These events, so trifling but yet so great, had not interrupted the games of piquet; only the young girl now appeared to interest herself in the play, nearly always taking the magistrate’s side against the marchioness.  She did not understand the game very well; but, when the old gambler cheated too openly, she would notice it, and say, laughingly,—­“She is robbing you, M. Daburon,—­she is robbing you!” He would willingly have been robbed of his entire fortune, to hear that sweet voice raised on his behalf.