uncles, I had to shed blood to get a good supper. Yet I fought for them;
yet I drank with them. How could I do otherwise? But now, when I am my
own master, what harm am I doing? Does your abbe, who is always prating
of virtue, take me for a murderer or a thief? Come, Edmee, confess now;
you know well enough that I am an honest man; you do not really think
me wicked; but I am displeasing to you because I am not clever, and you
like M. de la Marche because he has a knack of making unmeaning speeches
which I should blush to utter."

"And if, to be pleasing to me," she said with a smile, after listening
most attentively, and without withdrawing her hand which I had taken
through the bars, "if, in order to be preferred to M. de la Marche, it
were necessary to acquire more wit, as you say, would you not try?"

"I don't know," I replied, after hesitating a moment; "perhaps I should
be fool enough; for the power you have over me is more than I can
understand; but it would be a sorry piece of cowardice and a great
folly."

"Why, Bernard?"

"Because a woman who could love a man, not for his honest heart, but for
his pretty wit, would be hardly worth the pains I should have to take;
at least so it seems to me."

She remained silent in her turn, and then said to me as she pressed my
hand:

"You have much more sense and wit than one might think. And since you
force me to be quite frank with you, I will own that, as you now are and