form the daily poem of a fugitive delight. By a phenomenon of
retrospection I see now the graces of Honorine's mind and heart, to
which I paid little heed in the time of my happiness--like all who are
happy. From day to day I have appreciated the extent of my loss,
discovering the exquisite gifts of that capricious and refractory
young creature who has grown so strong and so proud under the heavy
hand of poverty and the shock of the most cowardly desertion. And that
heavenly blossom is fading in solitude and hiding!--Ah! The law of
which we were speaking,' he went on with bitter irony, 'the law is a
squad of gendarmes--my wife seized and dragged away by force! Would
not that be to triumph over a corpse? Religion has no hold on her; she
craves its poetry, she prays, but she does not listen to the
commandments of the Church. I, for my part, have exhausted everything
in the way of mercy, of kindness, of love; I am at my wits' end. Only
one chance of victory is left to me; the cunning and patience with
which bird-catchers at last entrap the wariest birds, the swiftest,
the most capricious, and the rarest. Hence, Maurice, when M. de
Grandville's indiscretion betrayed to you the secret of my life, I
ended by regarding this incident as one of the decrees of fate, one of
the utterances for which gamblers listen and pray in the midst of
their most impassioned play. . . . Have you enough affection for me to
show me romantic devotion?'

"'I see what you are coming to, Monsieur le Comte,' said I,
interrupting him; 'I guess your purpose. Your first secretary tried to
open your deed box. I know the heart of your second--he might fall in
love with your wife. And can you devote him to destruction by sending
him into the fire? Can any one put his hand into a brazier without
burning it?'