very sweet person. I knew her only when she was already past her
prime, with traces of having once been very pretty, and a taste for
fashionable style and display which seemed quite becoming to her.
She was naturally fond of social excitement; but she showed a great
deal of courage and dignity after the death of her husband. She
died a year after him, leaving Jeanne alone in the world."

"Clementine!" I cried out.

And on thus learning what I had never imagined--the mere idea of which
would have set all the forces of my soul in revolt--upon hearing
that Clementine was no longer in this world, something like a great
silence came upon me; and the feeling which flooded my whole being
was not a keen, strong pain, but a quiet and solemn sorrow. Yet I
was conscious of some incomprehensible sense of alleviation, and my
thought rose suddenly to heights before unknown.

"From wheresoever thou art at this moment, Clementine," I said to
myself, "look down upon this old heart now indeed cooled by age, yet
whose blood once boiled for thy sake, and say whether it is not
reanimated by the mere thought of being able to love all that remains
of thee on earth. Everything passes away since thou thyself hast
passed away; but Life is immortal; it is that Life we must love in
its forms eternally renewed. All the rest is child's play; and I
myself, with all my books, am only like a child playing with marbles.
The purpose of life--it is thou, Clementine, who has revealed it to
me!"...

Madame de Gabry aroused me from my thoughts by murmuring,