Suddenly Elise de Tecle appeared before them, like an angel dropped from heaven.  She knelt before the crippled youth, kissed his hand, and, brightening him with the rays of her beautiful eyes, told him she never had loved him half so well before.  He felt she spoke truly; he accepted her devotion, and they were married soon after.

Madame de Tecle was happy—­but she alone was so.  Her husband, notwithstanding the tenderness with which she treated him —­notwithstanding the happiness which he could not fail to read in her tranquil glance—­notwithstanding the birth of a daughter—­seemed never to console himself.  Even with her he was always possessed by a cold constraint; some secret sorrow consumed him, of which they found the key only on the day of his death.

“My darling,” he then said to his young wife—­“my darling, may God reward you for your infinite goodness!  Pardon me, if I never have told you how entirely I love you.  With a face like mine, how could I speak of love to one like you!  But my poor heart has been brimming over with it all the while.  Oh, Elise! how I have suffered when I thought of what I was before—­how much more worthy of you!  But we shall be reunited, dearest—­shall we not?—­where I shall be as perfect as you, and where I may tell you how much I adore you!  Do not weep for me, my own Elise!  I am happy now, for the first time, for I have dared to open my heart to you.  Dying men do not fear ridicule.  Farewell, Elise—­darling-wife!  I love you!” These tender words were his last.

After her husband’s death, Madame de Tecle lived with her father-in-law, but passed much of her time with her uncle.  She busied herself with the greatest solicitude in the education of her daughter, and kept house for both the old men, by both of whom she was equally idolized.

From the lips of the priest at Reuilly, whom he called on next day, Camors learned some of these details, while the old man practiced the violoncello with his heavy spectacles on his nose.  Despite his fixed resolution of preserving universal scorn, Camors could not resist a vague feeling of respect for Madame de Tecle; but it did not entirely eradicate the impure sentiment he was disposed to dedicate to her.  Fully determined to make her, if not his victim, at least his ally, he felt that this enterprise was one of unusual difficulty.  But he was energetic, and did not object to difficulties—­especially when they took such charming shape as in the present instance.

His meditations on this theme occupied him agreeably the rest of that week, during which time he overlooked his workmen and conferred with his architect.  Besides, his horses, his books, his domestics, and his journals arrived successively to dispel ennui.  Therefore he looked remarkably well when he jumped out of his dog-cart the ensuing Monday in front of M. des Rameures’s door under the eyes of Madame de Tecle.  As the latter gently stroked with her white hand the black and smoking shoulder of the thoroughbred Fitz-Aymon, Camors was for the first time presented to the Comte de Tecle, a quiet, sad, and taciturn old gentleman.  The cure, the subprefect of the district and his wife, the tax-collector, the family physician, and the tutor completed, as the journals say, the list of the guests.