that by showing a bold front to our destiny we should subdue it to our
will. The commencement was sinful, it has met with a dire retribution,
Jules's letters announced his speedy return. He had sold everything
in his own country, had given up all his mercantile affairs, through
which he had greatly increased an already considerable fortune, and
now he was about to join us, or rather me, without whom he could not
live. This appeared to me like the demand for payment of a heavy debt.
This debt I owed to Jules, who loved me with all his heart, who was
in possession of my father's promised word and mine also. Yet I could
not give up your friend. In a state of distraction I told him all; we
meditated flight. Yes, I was so far guilty, and I make the confession
in hopes that some portion of my errors may be expiated by repentance.
My father, who had long been in a declining state, suddenly grew
worse, and this delayed and hindered the fulfillment of our designs.
Jules arrived. During the five years he had been away he was much
changed in appearance, and that advantageously. I was struck when
I first saw him, but it was also easy to detect in those handsome
features and manly bearing, a spirit of restlessness and violence
which had already shown itself in him as a boy, and which passing
years, with their bitter experience and strong passions, had greatly
developed. The hope that we had cherished of D'Effernay's possible
indifference to me, of the change which time might have wrought in
his attachment, now seemed idle and absurd. His love was indeed
impassioned. He embraced me in a manner that made me shrink from him,
and altogether his deportment toward me was a strange contrast to
the gentle, tender, refined affection of our dear friend. I trembled
whenever Jules entered the room, and all that I had prepared to say
to him, all the plans which I had revolved in my mind respecting
him, vanished in an instant before the power of his presence, and
the almost imperative manner in which he claimed my hand. My father's