"Your nephew is young?" "Twenty-five." "He is well educated?" "Too well for his position, monsieur. My poor sister and her husband made great sacrifices for him. His sight being so poor, they gave him an excellent education in the hope he might enter the clergy, but Onésime felt that he had no calling that way, so there was nothing for him to do but secure a clerkship." "I know the rest, but how about his personal appearance? What kind of a looking young man is he?" "The poor fellow is neither handsome nor ugly, monsieur. He has a very kind and gentle manner, but his extreme near-sightedness gives him a rather scared look. He is really the best-hearted boy that ever lived. Ask mademoiselle, and see what she will tell you." "Really, Suzanne, such blindness on your part amazes me." "Such blindness, monsieur?" "Is it possible, Suzanne, that you, who are a person of so much experience and good sense, have not felt, I will not say the impropriety, but the grave imprudence there is in having your nephew under the same roof with my daughter, and allowing them to live in the extremely intimate relations of such a secluded existence as you lead here?" "I know that I am only a servant, monsieur, and that my nephew--" "That is not the question at all. Have not I and my daughter always striven to prove that we regarded you as a friend, and not as a servant?" "Then I do not understand the cause of your reproaches." "And that is very unfortunate, for if you had been more clear-sighted, you would long since have discovered what has happened." "Good Heavens! what has happened, monsieur?" "Sabine loves your nephew." "Mademoiselle!" "She loves him, I tell you." "Mademoiselle loves Onésime! Monsieur cannot be in earnest. It is impossible." "Impossible, and why?" "Because the poor boy is as timid as a girl; because he is not at all good-looking; because he sees very badly, a defect that makes him commit twenty blunders a day, at which mademoiselle is not unfrequently the first to laugh. He does not resemble a hero of romance in the least. Oh, no, monsieur, you need feel no anxiety on that score. Mademoiselle has always been very kind and considerate to Onésime, because he is my nephew, and she pitied him, but--" "Ah, blind woman that you are, not to have foreseen that, in a person of Sabine's character, in a person of her extreme sensibility and angelic kindness of heart, pity was almost certain to lead to a more tender sentiment,--as it has!" "Can it be possible that mademoiselle would condescend to look at a poor fellow like Onésime?" "It is precisely because he is poor and helpless and timid, and because his infirmity places him in such an exceptional and painful position, that Sabine was almost certain to love him, and you, who know her as well as I do, should have foreseen this. I hope to Heaven that your blindness may not prove disastrous in its consequences."