name of the Prefect of Police, and their respect for the power of a
Minister. Hence it is impossible for me to penetrate that heart; the
citadel is mine, but I cannot get into it. I have not a single means
of action. An act of violence would ruin me for ever.

"'How can I argue against reasons of which I know nothing? Should I
write a letter, and have it copied by a public writer, and laid before
Honorine? But that would be to run the risk of a third removal. The
last cost me fifty thousand francs. The purchase was made in the first
instance in the name of the secretary whom you succeeded. The unhappy
man, who did not know how lightly I sleep, was detected by me in the
act of opening a box in which I had put the private agreement; I
coughed, and he was seized with a panic; next day I compelled him to
sell the house to the man in whose name it now stands, and I turned
him out.

"'If it were not that I feel all my noblest faculties as a man
satisfied, happy, expansive; if the part I am playing were not that of
divine fatherhood; if I did not drink in delight by every pore, there
are moments when I should believe that I was a monomaniac. Sometimes
at night I hear the jingling bells of madness. I dread the violent
transitions from a feeble hope, which sometimes shines and flashes up,
to complete despair, falling as low as man can fall. A few days since
I was seriously considering the horrible end of the story of Lovelace
and Clarissa Harlowe, and saying to myself, if Honorine were the
mother of a child of mine, must she not necessarily return under her
husband's roof?

"'And I have such complete faith in a happy future, that ten months
ago I bought and paid for one of the handsomest houses in the Faubourg