Another lucifer, and now I pretended to be in most eager pursuit; but somehow my eyes would look up and rest upon her sweet countenance. “A diamond bracelet, you said?” muttered I, not knowing what I was saying. “No, sir, mere jet, and of no value whatever, save to myself. I am really distressed at all the inconvenience I have occasioned you. I entreat you to think no more of it.” My match was out, and I had not another. “Was ever a man robbed of such ecstasy for a mere pennyworth of stick and a little sulphur? O Fortune! is not this downright cruelty?” As I mumbled my complaints, I searched away with an honest zeal, patting the cushions all over, and poking away into most inscrutable pockets and recesses, while she, in a most beseeching tone, apologized for her request and besought me to forget it. “Found! found!” cried I, in true delight, as I chanced upon the treasure at my feet. “Oh, sir, you have made me so happy, and I am so much obliged, and so grateful to you!” “Not another word, I beseech you,” whispered I; “you are actually turning my head with ecstasy. Give me your hand, let me clasp it on your arm, and I am repaid.” “Will you kindly pass it to me, sir, through the window?” said she, timidly. “Ah!” cried I, in anguish, “your gratitude has been very fleeting.” She muttered something I could not catch, but I heard the rustle of her sleeve against the window-frame, and dark as it was, pitch dark, I knew her hand was close to me. Opening the bracelet, I passed it round her wrist as reverently as though it were the arm of a Queen of Spain, one touch of whom is high treason. I trembled so, that it was some seconds before I could make the clasp meet. This done, I felt she was withdrawing her hand, when, with something like that headlong impulse by which men set their lives on one chance, I seized the fingers in my grasp, and implanted two rapturous kisses on them. She snatched her hand hastily away, closed the window with a sharp bang, and I was alone once more in my darkness, but in such a flutter of blissful delight that even the last reproving gesture could scarcely pain me. It mattered little to me that day that the lightning felled a great pine and threw it across the road, that the torrents were so swollen that we only could pass them with crowds of peasants around the carriage with ropes and poles to secure it, that four oxen were harnessed in front of our leaders to enable us to meet the hurricane, or that the postboys were paid treble their usual fare for all their perils to life and limb. I cared for none of these, Enough for me that, on this day, I can say with Schiller, “Ich habe genossen das irdische Gluck, Ich habe gelebt and geliebt!” CHAPTER XXIII. JEALOUSY UNSUPPORTED BY COURAGE