"You are unjust to God," she said to Ascanio; "there is some one, your kind master at least, who loves you, and you knew your mother. I cannot remember my mother's kisses, for she died in giving birth to me. I was brought up by my father's sister, a crabbed, ill-tempered woman, and yet I mourned her bitterly when I lost her two years ago, for in the absence of any other affection my heart clung to her as ivy clings to a cliff. For two years I have been living in this place with Dame Perrine, and notwithstanding my loneliness, and although my father comes very rarely to see me, these two years have been and will be the happiest of my whole life." "You have indeed suffered much," said Ascanio, "but though the past has been so painful, why do you dread the future? Yours, alas! is full of glorious promise. You are nobly born, rich, and beautiful, and the shadow of your early years will only bring out in bolder relief the splendor of the rest of your life." Colombe sadly shook her head. "Oh mother! mother!" she murmured. When, rising in thought above the paltry present, one loses sight of the trivial necessities of the moment in the brilliant flashes which illuminate and epitomize a whole life, past and future, the heart is sometimes affected with a dangerous vertigo; and when one's memory is laden with a thousand sorrows, when one dreads bitter anguish to come, the same heart is often a prey to terrible emotion and fatal weakness. One must be very strong not to fall when the weight of destiny is pressing down upon one's heart. These two children, who had already suffered so much, who had been always alone, had but to pronounce a single word to make a single future for their twofold past; but one was too dutiful, the other too respectful, to pronounce that word. Ascanio gazed at Colombe, however, with infinite tenderness in his eyes, and Colombe permitted his scrutiny with divine trust. With clasped hands, and in the tone in which he might have prayed, the apprentice said to the maiden:-- "Colombe, if you have any desire which I can gratify by pouring out all my blood to gratify it, if any disaster threatens you, and nothing more than a life is needed to avert it, say one word to me, Colombe, as you might say it to your brother, and I shall be very happy." "Thanks, thanks!" said Colombe; "I know that you have already nobly risked your life once at a word from me; but God alone can save me this time." She had no time to say more, for Dame Perrine and Dame Ruperta stopped in front of them at that moment.