of which consisted in the removal of your neighbour's landmarks, in the
right of the poor to appropriate the property of the rich, in the right
of love to dispense with marriage, and the duty of the State to provide
for any children that might result from such union,--the parents being
incapacitated to do so, as whatever they might leave was due to the
treasury in common. Graham listened to these doctrines with melancholy
not unmixed with contempt. "Are these opinions of yours," he asked,
"derived from reading or your own reflection?"

"Well, from both, but from circumstances in life that induced me to read
and reflect. I am one of the many victims of the tyrannical law of
marriage. When very young I married a woman who made me miserable, and
then forsook me. Morally, she has ceased to be my wife; legally, she is.
I then met with another woman who suits me, who loves me. She lives with
me; I cannot marry her; she has to submit to humiliations, to be called
contemptuously an _ouvrier's_ mistress. Then, though before I was only a
Republican, I felt there was something wrong in society which needed a
greater change than that of a merely political government; and then, too,
when I was all troubled and sore, I chanced to read one of Madame de
Grantmesnil's books. A glorious genius that woman's!"

"She has genius, certainly," said Graham, with a keen pang at his heart,
--Madame de Grantmesnil, the dearest friend of Isaura! "But," he added,
"though I believe that eloquent author has indirectly assailed certain
social institutions, including that of marriage, I am perfectly persuaded
that she never designed to effect such complete overthrow of the system
which all civilized communities have hitherto held in reverence as your
doctrines would attempt; and, after all, she but expresses her ideas
through the medium of fabulous incidents and characters. And men of your
sense should not look for a creed in the fictions of poets and romance-