remnant of the great crusade of free-thinkers will not mend its pen and sharpen its tongue to sustain your cause against the outcry of the salons. All these cowardly blows, all these insults will eventually fall on Julien's heart. He will live in never-ending anxiety, always on the quivive; he will fall out with all his friends; he may fight with some of them----" "Enough, enough, Marcel," said Julie, weeping. "I see that I have been mad, that I have been led by the counsel of a selfish passion, or by my absolute ignorance of social necessities. I see that Julien's life would be made burdensome by public reprobation, that life would be a never-ending source of danger and unhappiness.--Ah! Marcel, you have broken my heart; but you have done your duty, and I esteem you the more. Let us go and tell Julien that I mean to break--_Mon Dieu!_ how shall I tell him that?" "Julien will not believe you! He will laugh at your generous pretence; he will tell you that he longs to suffer for you. He is courageous and strong, and I have no doubt that he adores you. If you consult him, his first exclamation will be: 'Love at any price, love and persecution, love and poverty!'--He does not doubt himself, and his mother, who is equal to him in the matter of courage and unselfishness, will assist him to sacrifice everything; but imagine Julien a year or two hence, when he sees his mother suffer. Only by the most extraordinary efforts is he able now to shield her from the horrors of poverty, and in spite of him, in spite of herself, in spite of everything, she suffers on that account, you may be sure. Madame Thierry is an enthusiast, in nowise a stoic. She was brought up to do nothing, and she doesn't know how to do anything but knit and read, sitting comfortably in her easy-chair. Moreover her health is frail. She is not like my wife, she would not sit up till midnight mending her son's shirts; her beautiful hands are no better acquainted with fatigue than yours. What will happen then, when Julien has a wife and children? He will blame himself for your miseries, and if remorse ever gains a foothold in that proud heart, farewell to courage and perhaps to talent!" "Enough, I tell you, my dear Marcel. Advise me, guide me; command, for I surrender. Must I not see him or speak to him?" "No, you certainly must not, my dear countess. He must know nothing of what has happened, and Monsieur Antoine's gifts must fall into his hands without any suspicion on his part of the terms on which our uncle became tractable. Otherwise, he would be quite capable of refusing them." "Marcel," said the countess, rising and ringing the bell, "I must leave this house instantly and never return!" A servant appeared. "Send for a cab," she said, "and send Camille to me." "I shall carry nothing away," she said to Marcel. "You must pay my servants, collect my most necessary effects and send them to me." "But where are you going?"