Thuillier to come and fetch him.

The following Sunday he felt certain he should find Madame Colleville
at church; he was not mistaken, for they came out, each of them, at
the same moment, and met at the corner of the rue des Deux-Eglises.
Theodose offered his arm, which Flavie accepted, leaving her daughter
to walk in front with her brother Anatole. This youngest child, then
about twelve years old, being destined for the seminary, was now at
the Barniol institute, where he obtained an elementary education;
Barniol, the son-in-law of the Phellions, was naturally making the
tuition fees light, with a view to the hoped-for alliance between
Felix and Celeste.

"Have you done me the honor and favor of thinking over what I said to
you so badly the other day?" asked the lawyer, in a caressing tone,
pressing the lady's arm to his heart with a movement both soft and
strong; for he seemed to wish to restrain himself and appear
respectful, in spite of his evident eagerness. "Do not misunderstand
my intentions," he continued, after receiving from Madame Colleville
one of those looks which women trained to the management of passion
know how to give,--a look that, by mere expression, can convey both
severe rebuke and secret community of sentiment. "I love you as we
love a noble nature struggling against misfortune; Christian charity
enfolds both the strong and the weak; its treasure belongs to both.
Refined, graceful, elegant as you are, made to be an ornament of the
highest society, what man could see you without feeling an immense
compassion in his heart--buried here among these odious bourgeois, who
know nothing of you, not even the aristocratic value of a single one
of your attitudes, or those enchanting inflections of your voice! Ah!
if I were only rich! if I had power! your husband, who is certainly a