old family to be turned adrift like beggars. My poor mistress! my pretty
demoiselles that I played with and nursed ever since I was a child! (I
was just six when Josephine was born) and that I shall love with my last
breath"--

She could say no more, but choked by the strong feeling so long pent up
in her own bosom, fell to sobbing hysterically, and trembling like one
in an ague.

The statesman, who had passed all his short life at school and college,
was frightened, and took hold of her and pulled her, and cried,
"Oh! don't, Jacintha; you will kill yourself, you will die; this is
frightful: help here! help!" Jacintha put her hand to his mouth, and,
without leaving off her hysterics, gasped out, "Ah! don't expose me."
So then he didn't know what to do; but he seized a tumbler and filled
it with wine, and forced it between her lips. All she did was to bite a
piece out of the glass as clean as if a diamond had cut it. This did
her a world of good: destruction of sacred household property gave her
another turn. "There, I've broke your glass now," she cried, with a
marvellous change of tone; and she came-to and cried quietly like a
reasonable person, with her apron to her eyes.

When Edouard saw she was better, he took her hand and said proudly,
"Secret for secret. I choose this moment to confide to you that I love
Mademoiselle Rose de Beaurepaire. Love her? I did love her; but now you
tell me she is poor and in distress, I adore her." The effect of this
declaration on Jacintha was magical, comical. Her apron came down from
one eye, and that eye dried itself and sparkled with curiosity: the
whole countenance speedily followed suit and beamed with sacred joy.
What! an interesting love affair confided to her all in a moment! She