"'None other for me,' he said, sinking back as if hopeless. 'I am plain
and coarse, not one of the scented darlings of the aristocrats. Say that
I am ugly, brutish; I did not make myself so, any more than I made myself
love her. It is my fate. But am I to submit to the consequences of my
fate without a struggle? Not I. As strong as my love is, so strong is
my will. It can be no stronger,' continued he, gloomily. 'Aunt Babette,
you must help me--you must make her love me.' He was so fierce here,
that Pierre said he did not wonder that his mother was frightened.

"'I, Victor!' she exclaimed. 'I make her love you? How can I? Ask me
to speak for you to Mademoiselle Didot, or to Mademoiselle Cauchois even,
or to such as they, and I'll do it, and welcome. But to Mademoiselle de
Crequy, why you don't know the difference! Those people--the old
nobility I mean--why they don't know a man from a dog, out of their own
rank! And no wonder, for the young gentlemen of quality are treated
differently to us from their very birth. If she had you to-morrow, you
would be miserable. Let me alone for knowing the aristocracy. I have
not been a concierge to a duke and three counts for nothing. I tell you,
all your ways are different to her ways.'

"'I would change my "ways," as you call them.'

"'Be reasonable, Victor.'

"'No, I will not be reasonable, if by that you mean giving her up. I
tell you two lives are before me; one with her, one without her. But the
latter will be but a short career for both of us. You said, aunt, that
the talk went in the conciergerie of her father's hotel, that she would
have nothing to do with this cousin whom I put out of the way to-day?'