neighbour; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people
personified. There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to

your party, you that might be its Sylla if you had the slightest
ambition that way. I know nothing about politics myself; I argue

from my own feelings; but still I know enough to guess that
society would be overturned if people were always calling its

foundations in question----"
"If that is how your Court and your Government think, I am sorry

for you," broke in Montriveau. "The Restoration, madam, ought
to say, like Catherine de Medici, when she heard that the battle

of Dreux was lost, `Very well; now we will go to the
meeting-house.' Now 1815 was your battle of Dreux. Like the

royal power of those days, you won in fact, while you lost in
right. Political Protestantism has gained an ascendancy over

people's minds. If you have no mind to issue your Edict of
Nantes; or if, when it is issued, you publish a Revocation; if

you should one day be accused and convicted of repudiating the
Charter, which is simply a pledge given to maintain the interests

established under the Republic, then the Revolution will rise
again, terrible in her strength, and strike but a single blow.

It will not be the Revolution that will go into exile; she is the
very soil of France. Men die, but people's interests do not die.

. . . Eh, great Heavens! what are France and the crown and
rightful sovereigns, and the whole world besides, to us? Idle

words compared with my happiness. Let them reign or be hurled
from the throne, little do I care. Where am I now?"

"In the Duchesse de Langeais's boudoir, my friend."
"No, no. No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais; I am with

my dear Antoinette."
"Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are," she said,

laughing and pushing him back, gently however.
"So you have never loved me," he retorted, and anger flashed in

lightning from his eyes.
"No, dear"; but the "No" was equivalent to "Yes."

"I am a great ass," he said, kissing her hands. The terrible
queen was a woman once more.--"Antoinette," he went on, laying

his head on her feet, "you are too chastely tender to speak of
our happiness to anyone in this world."

"Oh!" she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful
spring, "you are a great simpleton." And without another word

she fled into the drawing-room.
"What is it now?" wondered the General, little knowing that the

touch of his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill
through her from foot to head.

In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear
divinely sweet chords. The Duchess was at the piano. If the man

of science or the poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing
his intelligence to bear upon his enjoyment without loss of

delight, he is conscious that the alphabet and phraseology of
music are but cunning instruments for the composer, like the wood

and copper wire under the hands of the executant. For the poet
and the man of science there is a music existing apart,

underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit
and senses. Andiamo mio ben can draw tears of joy or pitying

laughter at the will of the singer; and not unfrequently one here
and there in the world, some girl unable to live and bear the

heavy burden of an unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates
with the throb of passion, may take up a musical theme, and lo!

heaven is opened for them, or they find a language for themselves
in some sublimemelody, some song lost to the world.

The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music
unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some

mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest.
"Great Heavens! what are you playing there?" he asked in an

unsteady voice.
"The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, Fleuve du Tage."

"I did not know that there was such music in a piano," he
returned.

"Ah!" she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a
woman looks at the man she loves, "nor do you know, my friend,

that I love you, and that you cause me horriblesuffering; and
that I feel that I must utter my cry of pain without putting it

too plainly into words. If I did not, I should yield----But you
see nothing."

"And you will not make me happy!"
"Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day."

The General turned abruptly from her and went. But out in the
street he brushed away the tears that he would not let fall.

The religious phase lasted for three months. At the end of that
time the Duchess grew weary of vain repetitions; the Deity, bound

hand and foot, was delivered up to her lover. Possibly she may
have feared that by sheer dint of talking of eternity she might

perpetuate his love in this world and the next. For her own
sake, it must be believed that no man had touched her heart, or

her conduct would be inexcusable. She was young; the time when
men and women feel that they cannot afford to lose time or to

quibble over their joys was still far off. She, no doubt, was on
the verge not of first love, but of her first experience of the

bliss of love. And from inexperience, for want of the painful
lessons which would have taught her to value the treasure poured

out at her feet, she was playing with it. Knowing nothing of the
glory and rapture of the light, she was fain to stay in the

shadow.
Armand was just beginning to understand this strange situation;

he put his hope in the first word spoken by nature. Every
evening, as he came away from Mme de Langeais's, he told himself

that no woman would accept the tenderest, most delicate proofs of
a man's love during seven months, nor yield passively to the

slighter demands of passion, only to cheat love at the last. He
was waitingpatiently for the sun to gain power, not doubting but

that he should receive the earliest fruits. The married woman's
hesitations and the religious scruples he could quite well

understand. He even rejoiced over those battles. He mistook the
Duchess's heartless coquetry for modesty; and he would not have

had her otherwise. So he had loved to see her devising
obstacles; was he not gradually triumphing over them? Did not

every victory won swell the meagre sum of lovers' intimacies long
denied, and at last conceded with every sign of love? Still, he

had had such leisure to taste the full sweetness of every small
successive conquest on which a lover feeds his love, that these

had come to be matters of use and wont. So far as obstacles
went, there were none now save his own awe of her; nothing else

left between him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed
him to call her Antoinette. So he made up his mind to demand

more, to demand all. Embarrassed like a young lover who cannot
dare to believe that his idol can stoop so low, he hesitated for

a long time. He passed through the experience of terrible
reactions within himself. A set purpose was annihilated by a

word, and definite resolves died within him on the threshold. He
despised himself for his weakness, and still his desire remained

unuttered.
Nevertheless, one evening, after sitting in gloomymelancholy, he

brought out a fierce demand for his illegally legitimate rights.
The Duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave's request to guess

his desire. When was a man's desire a secret? And have not
women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of certain changes of

countenance?
"What! you wish to be my friend no longer?" she broke in at the

first words, and a divine red surging like new blood under the
transparent skin, lent brightness to her eyes. "As a reward for

my generosity, you would dishonour me? Just reflect a little. I
myself have thought much over this; and I think always for us

BOTH. There is such a thing as a woman's loyalty, and we can no