"In many marriages, there's little love--true love--on either side; that's certain," said he, passing his hand down his face, and looking grave. "But marriage was ordained for none but lovers." "The reason I want to be married to Sophie is because I love her so much I couldn't live without her," resumed Bressant, as if stating some unusual circumstance. "Humph!" ejaculated the professor, partly amused and partly puzzled. Bressant rubbed his forehead, and fingered his beard awhile, and then continued: "We've been reading poetry lately, and romances, and such things. I used to think they were nonsense--good for nothing; because they came out so beautifully, and represented love to be so great an element in the world. But now I see they were not good enough; they are much below the truth; I mean to write poetry and romances myself!" This tickled Professor Valeyon so much, that he burst out in a most genuine laugh. The intellectual animal of two or three months before seemed to have laid aside all claims to what his brain had won for him, and to be beginning existence over again with a new object and new materials. And had Bressant indeed been a child, the succession of his ideas and impulses could hardly have been more primitive and natural. "What's to become of our Hebrew and history, if you turn poet?" inquired the old gentleman, still chuckling. Bressant turned his head away and closed his eyes wearily. "I don't want any thing more to do with that," said he. "Love is study enough, and work enough, for a lifetime. Mathematics, and logic, and philosophy--all those things have nothing to do with love, and couldn't help me in it. It's outside of every thing else: it has laws of its own: I'm just beginning to learn them." "A professional lover! well, as long as you recognize the sufficiency of one object in your studies, you might do worse, that's certain. But you can't make a living out of it, my boy." "I don't need money, I have enough; if I hadn't, money-making is for men without hearts; but mine is bigger than my head; I must give myself up to it." "That won't do," returned the professor, shaking his head. "Lovers must earn their bread-and-butter as well as people with brains. Besides," here his face and tone became serious, "there's one thing we've both forgotten. This matter of your false name--you can't be married as Bressant, you know: and if the tenure of your property depends, as you said, on preserving the _incognito_, I have reason to believe that you stand an excellent chance of losing every cent of it, the moment the minister has pronounced your real name." "No matter!" said the young man, with an impatient movement, as if to dismiss an unprofitable subject. "I shall have Sophie; my father's will can't deprive me of her. I don't want to be famous, nor to have a great reputation--except with her."