Madame Thierry was on the point of swooning. Julien almost lost patience with her, for her agitation caused him to lose minutes, seconds which he might have passed with Julie. Marcel, who was delighted by the good news she had brought, was also vexed by his aunt's delay, and went upstairs to hurry her. So that Julie was left alone in the studio for several moments. Those moments, swiftly as they passed, seemed afterward like a century in her memory, for the light shone into her heart in a single dazzling ray. "Your happiness is found," said an inward voice in a tone of sovereign authority: "it is here. It consists in nothing less than the possession of a boundless love concealed in the bosom of a narrow, straitened existence. Julien's mother knew and enjoyed that happiness throughout her youth. Intercourse with the world and opulence added nothing to her happiness. They rather diminished it by introducing ideas foreign to love. Forget society, you will be the better for it. Break with your whole past, which deceived you and set you at odds with yourself. Become reconciled to your own beginnings, which are more nearly connected with the third estate than with the nobility; and to your conscience, which reproaches you for having listened to the advice of false glory and for having yielded to the threats of your ambitious kinsfolk; seek to be received back into favor by the God who abandons souls which are enamored of false joys; be true, be strong like this young man who adores you, and who has just revealed to you in a glance the greatest and noblest passion you will ever inspire!"