“I am very ill; I have been unable to leave my room for a long while, but I am unwilling to delay any longer to give you some most important advice. I am responsible for all the harm, and it is my place to try to repair it. I brought a man named Dufresne to your house. Alas! how bitterly I repent it! but at that time I believed him to be incapable of doing anything indelicate even. A deplorable passion had long made me blind, but now it is no longer possible for me to doubt the ghastly truth. This Dufresne is a miserable wretch, capable of every villainy. I have only too many proofs of the infamy of his conduct. He has robbed me of all that I possessed, but my regret for my money is less than my shame at having been his dupe. Gambling, debauchery, all sorts of vice are familiar to him, and he has the art to conceal his shocking passions. I dare not tell you what I know--but break off instantly the intimacy he has formed with your husband, or fear the worst for him from the advice of a monster to whom nothing is sacred. “WIDOW DOLBAN.” Adeline shuddered; her heart was oppressed by secret terror; she read the fatal letter once more, then raised her lovely tear-bedewed eyes heavenward. “So this is the man on whose account Edouard fell out with my mother! this is the sort of man that his adviser, his best friend, is! O heaven! what misery I foresee in the future! but how am I to avert it? My husband no longer listens to me; he spurns my advice, he is deaf to my prayers. But he could not be deaf to my tears. No, Edouard is not hard-hearted; he loves me still, he will not spurn his Adeline. I will implore him, in our child’s name, to cease to see a man who will lead him on to ruin. This letter will be a sufficient proof, I trust; he will open his eyes and sever all relations with him who has already caused me so much unhappiness.” These reflections allayed Adeline’s distress in some measure; fully determined to show her husband, as soon as he should return, the letter that she had received, she decided to sit up for him. He could not be much longer, it was already quite late, and all she needed was a little courage. Poor woman! if she had known how her husband was occupied, while she, melancholy and pensive, devoured in silence the torments of anxiety and jealousy! You who try to read the future,--how you would deserve to be pitied if your eyes could pierce space, and if your ears always heard the truth! Illusion was invented for the happiness of mortals; it does them almost as much good as hope.