aside such serious attacks. Are you not deceived in him? However,
I will obey you; I will make him my friend. Do not be anxious, my

adored one, on the points that concern your honor; is it not mine
as well? My diamonds shall be pledged; we intend, mamma and I, to

employ our utmost resources in the payment of your debts; and we
shall try to buy back your vineyard at Belle-Rose. My mother, who

understands business like a lawyer, blames you very much for not
having told her of your embarrassments. She would not have bought

--thinking to please you--the Grainrouge domain, and then she
could have lent you that money as well as the thirty thousand

francs she brought with her. She is in despair at your decision;
she fears the climate of India for your health. She entreats you

to be sober, and not to let yourself be trapped by women--That
made me laugh; I am as sure of you as I am of myself. You will

return to me rich and faithful. I alone know your feminine
delicacy, and the secret sentiments which make you a human flower

worthy of the gardens of heaven. The Bordeaux people were right
when they gave you your floral nickname.

But alas! who will take care of my delicate flower? My heart is
rent with dreadful ideas. I, his wife, Natalie, I am here, and

perhaps he suffers far away from me! And not to share your pains,
your vexations, your dangers! In whom will you confide? how will

you live without that ear into which you have hitherto poured all?
Dear, sensitive plant, swept away by this storm, will you be able

to survive in another soil than your native land?
It seems to me that I have been alone for centuries. I have wept

sorely. To be the cause of your ruin! What a text for the thoughts
of a loving woman! You treated me like a child to whom we give all

it asks, or like a courtesan, allowed by some thoughtless youth to
squander his fortune. Ah! such indulgence was, in truth, an

insult. Did you think I could not live without fine dresses, balls
and operas and social triumphs? Am I so frivolous a woman? Do you

think me incapable of serious thought, of ministering to your
fortune as I have to your pleasures? If you were not so far away,

and so unhappy, I would blame you for that impertinence. Why lower
your wife in that way? Good heavens! what induced me to go into

society at all?--to flatter your vanity; I adorned myself for you,
as you well know. If I did wrong, I am punished, cruelly; your

absence is a harsh expiation of our mutual life.
Perhaps my happiness was too complete; it had to be paid by some

great trial--and here it is. There is nothing now for me but
solitude. Yes, I shall live at Lanstrac, the place your father

laid out, the house you yourself refurnished so luxuriously. There
I shall live, with my mother and my child, and await you,--sending

you daily, night and morning, the prayers of all. Remember that
our love is a talisman against all evil. I have no more doubt of

you than you can have of me. What comfort can I put into this
letter,--I so desolate, so broken, with the lonely years before

me, like a desert to cross. But no! I am not utterly unhappy; the
desert will be brightened by our son,--yes, it must be a SON, must

it not?
And now, adieu, my own beloved; our love and prayers will follow

you. The tears you see upon this paper will tell you much that I
cannot write. I kiss you on this little square of paper, see!

below. Take those kisses from
Your Natalie.

+--------+
| |

| |
| |

+--------+
This letter threw Paul into a reverie caused as much by memories of

the past as by these fresh assurances of love. The happier a man is,
the more he trembles. In souls which are exclusively tender--and

exclusive tenderness carries with it a certain amount of weakness--
jealousy and uneasiness exist in direct proportion to the amount of

the happiness and its extent. Strong souls are neither jealous nor
fearful; jealousy is doubt, fear is meanness. Unlimited belief is the

principal attribute of a great man. If he is deceived (for strength as
well as weakness may make a man a dupe) his contempt will serve him as

an axe with which to cut through all. This greatness, however, is the
exception. Which of us has not known what it is to be abandoned by the

spirit which sustains our frail machine, and to hearken to that
mysterious Voice denying all? Paul, his mind going over the past, and

caught here and there by irrefutable facts, believed and doubted all.
Lost in thought, a prey to an awful and involuntary incredulity, which

was combated by the instincts of his own pure love and his faith in
Natalie, he read and re-read that wordy letter, unable to decide the

question which it raised either for or against his wife. Love is
sometimes as great and true when smothered in words as it is in brief,

strong sentences.
To understand the situation into which Paul de Manerville was about to

enter we must think of him as he was at this moment, floating upon the
ocean as he floated upon his past, looking back upon the years of his

life as he looked at the limitless water and cloudless sky about him,
and ending his reverie by returning, through tumults of doubt, to

faith, the pure, unalloyed and perfect faith of the Christian and the
lover, which enforced the voice of his faithful heart.

It is necessary to give here his own letter to de Marsay written on
leaving Paris, to which his friend replied in the letter he received

through old Mathias from the dock:--
From Comte Paul de Manerville to Monsieur le Marquis Henri de

Marsay:
Henri,--I have to say to you one of the most vital words a man can

say to his friend:--I am ruined. When you read this I shall be on
the point of sailing from Bordeaux to Calcutta on the brig "Belle-

Amelie."
You will find in the hands of your notary a deed which only needs

your signature to be legal. In it, I lease my house to you for six
years at a nominal rent. Send a duplicate of that deed to my wife.

I am forced to take this precaution that Natalie may continue to
live in her own home without fear of being driven out by

creditors.
I also convey to you by deed the income of my share of the

entailed property for four years; the whole amounting to one
hundred and fifty thousand francs, which sum I beg you to lend me

and to send in a bill of exchange on some house in Bordeaux to my
notary, Maitre Mathias. My wife will give you her signature to

this paper as an endorsement of your claim to my income. If the
revenues of the entail do not pay this loan as quickly as I now

expect, you and I will settle on my return. The sum I ask for is
absolutely necessary to enable me to seek my fortune in India; and

if I know you, I shall receive it in Bordeaux the night before I
sail.

I have acted as you would have acted in my place. I held firm to
the last moment, letting no one suspect my ruin. Before the news

of the seizure of my property at Bordeaux reached Paris, I had
attempted, with one hundred thousand francs which I obtained on

notes, to recover myself by play. Some lucky stroke might still
have saved me. I lost.

How have I ruined myself? By my own will, Henri. From the first
month of my married life I saw that I could not keep up the style

in which I started. I knew the result; but I chose to shut my
eyes; I could not say to my wife, "We must leave Paris and live at

Lanstrac." I have ruined myself for her as men ruin themselves for
a mistress, but I knew it all along. Between ourselves, I am

neither a fool nor a weak man. A fool does not let himself be
ruled with his eyes open by a passion; and a man who starts for

India to reconstruct his fortune, instead of blowing out his
brains, is not weak.

I shall return rich, or I shall never return at all. Only, my dear
friend, as I want wealthsolely for HER, as I must be absent six

years at least, and as I will not risk being duped in any way, I