explained by three words: Paris; French workmen; money! I was as much
in love as the Count could possibly desire as a security. Would the
prudence of a young man of five-and-twenty be equal to the part I was
undertaking, involving a friend's happiness? To settle that matter, I
may confess that I counted very much on my uncle's advice; for I had
been authorized by the Count to take him into confidence in any case
where I deemed his interference necessary. I engaged a garden; I
devoted myself to horticulture; I worked frantically, like a man whom
nothing can divert, turning up the soil of the market-garden, and
appropriating the ground to the culture of flowers. Like the maniacs
of England, or of Holland, I gave it out that I was devoted to one
kind of flower, and especially grew dahlias, collecting every variety.
You will understand that my conduct, even in the smallest details, was
laid down for me by the Count, whose whole intellectual powers were
directed to the most trifling incidents of the tragi-comedy enacted in
the Rue Saint-Maur. As soon as the Countess had gone to bed, at about
eleven at night, Octave, Madame Gobain, and I sat in council. I heard
the old woman's report to the Count of his wife's least proceedings
during the day. He inquired into everything: her meals, her
occupations, her frame of mind, her plans for the morrow, the flowers
she proposed to imitate. I understood what love in despair may be when
it is the threefold passion of the heart, the mind, and the senses.
Octave lived only for that hour.

"During two months, while my work in the garden lasted, I never set
eyes on the little house where my fair neighbor dwelt. I had not even
inquired whether I had a neighbor, though the Countess' garden was
divided from mine by a paling, along which she had planted cypress
trees already four feet high. One fine morning Madame Gobain announced
to her mistress, as a disastrous piece of news, the intention,