returned an encouraging and consolatory reply, and there ensued an animated correspondence and long series of secret interviews, known of course to everybody but to the parents who forbade them. At last, the vigilance of the latter became excessive: Mademoiselle Combes, never suffered out of sight of her mother, who even slept in her room, was compelled to scribble her love-letters in haste, by favour of a half-drawn curtain and a ray of lamplight, whilst the good lady was absorbed in her evening devotions; until at last, by reason of this painful constraint, or from some other cause, she fell into a state of languor, and was taken to the baths of Vichy. "She there recovered her health," says Fléchier, who manifestly sympathises with the sufferings of these constant lovers; "but the miracle was less owing to the waters than to secret interviews with her lover. He followed her in disguise, and remained hidden in a house adjacent to the baths, whither, under some pretext, a good lady conducted her, and thence, after a space of conversation, led her back to her mother. Never were the waters of Vichy more eagerly desired, or taken with more pleasure." After this, Mademoiselle de Combes, hoping to alarm her parents into acquiescence, took refuge in a convent, where she was received on condition that she should break off all intercourse with the world. But the superior, a lady of quality and friend of both parties, favoured the reception of letters, and even visits from Fayet to his mistress. The lover was smuggled by female friends as far as the convent grating. At last, Madame de Combes persuaded her daughter to return home, and treated her more kindly than before, but continued stanch in her opposition to the marriage. To be brief, this state of affairs lasted eight or nine years. "The thing went so far," says the Abbé, "that they swore fidelity before the altar, making profane vows in holy places, and even writing promises signed with their blood, and committing other follies peculiar to persons whom a violent passion blinds. By this time the lady was in her twenty-fourth year, and seeing herself near the age when the law exempts children from the control of their parents, she exhorted Fayet to perseverance, writing him to that effect."