But she was a sister too--a sister indulgent to a fault, and, after a feeling of uneasiness which his evident distress had caused her during the past week, she had not the courage to trouble her brother with reproaches on seeing him look so happy. This mixture of conflicting sentiments prevented her from provoking any fresh confidences, and René was become too discreet to make them. It was impossible for him to speak of Suzanne now; what he felt for her could not be expressed in words. He had found suitable apartments almost immediately in a quiet street in the centre of the Batignolles quarter, just where Suzanne had wanted them; and almost immediately, too, chance had so willed it that he was free to devote himself to her entirely. A week had scarcely passed since Suzanne's appearance in the Rue Coëtlogon when Claude Larcher, the only one of the poet's friends whom he visited at all often, suddenly left Paris. He called on René, who had neglected him a little of late, about half-past six one evening, in travelling garb, his face pale and agitated. The family were just sitting down to dinner. 'I have only come to bid you good-bye,' said Claude without taking a seat; 'I am going by the nine o'clock Mont Cenis express, and I shall have to dine at the station.' 'Shall you be away long?' asked Emilie. '_Chi lo sa?_' replied Claude, 'as they say in that beautiful land where I shall be to-morrow.' 'Lucky fellow!' cried Fresneau, 'to be able to go and read Virgil in his own country instead of teaching donkeys to translate him!'