“And what about me, Jean, do you not think of me?  A little while!  A little while!  But that is all that remains to me of life, a little while.  And during these last days, that I owe to the grace of God, it was my happiness, yes, Jean, my happiness, to feel you here, near me, and now you are going away!  Jean, wait a little patiently, it can not be for very long now for.  Wait until the good God has called me to himself, wait till I shall be gone, to meet there, at his side, your father and your mother.  Do not go, Jean, do not go.”

“If you love me, I love you, too, and you know it well.”

“Yes, I know it.”

“I have just the same affection for you now that I had when I was quite little, when you took me to yourself, when you brought me up.  My heart has not changed, will never change.  But if duty—­if honor—­oblige me to go?”

“Ah, if it is duty, if it is honor, I say nothing more, Jean, that stands before all!—­all!—­all!  I have always known you a good judge of your duty, your honor.  Go, my boy, go, I ask you nothing more, I wish to know no more.”

“But I wish to tell you all,” cried Jean, vanquished by his emotion, “and it is better that you should know all.  You will stay here, you will return to the castle, you will see her again—­her!”

“See her!  Who?”

“Bettina!”

“Bettina?”

“I adore her, I adore her!”

“Oh, my poor boy!”

“Pardon me for speaking to you of these things; but I tell you as I would have told my father.”

“And then, I have not been able to speak of it to any one, and it stifled me; yes, it is a madness which has seized me, which has grown upon me, little by little, against my will, for you know very-well—­My God!  It was here that I began to love her.  You know, when she came here with her sister—­with the little ‘rouleaux’ of francs—­her hair fell down—­and then the evening, the month of Mary!  Then I was permitted to see her freely, familiarly, and you, yourself, spoke to me constantly of her.  You praised her sweetness, her goodness.  How often have you told me that there was no one in the world better than she is!”

“And I thought it, and I think it still.  And no one here knows her better than I do, for it is I alone who have seen her with the poor.  If you only knew how tender, and how good she is!  Neither wretchedness nor suffering repulse her.  But, my dear boy, I am wrong to tell you all this.”

“No, no, I will see her no more, I promise you; but I like to hear you speak of her.”

“In your whole life, Jean, you will never meet a better woman, nor one who has more elevated sentiments.  To such a point, that one day—­she had taken me with her in an open carriage, full of toys—­she was taking these toys to a poor sick little girl, and when she gave them to her, to make the poor little thing laugh, to amuse her, she talked so prettily to her that I thought of you, and I said to myself, I remember it now, ’Ah, if she were poor!’”