He loved her, and he feared that his love was hopeless. Simple as M. de Bergerac’s life might be, he bore upon him the stamp of the old _noblesse_. He was of that nation whose _dernière grand dame_ died with Queen Marie-Amélie; and it was not to be supposed there was no latent pride of birth beneath that graceful humility of manner which rendered the exile so dear to the cottagers and peasant children about Greenlands. “I think he would give his daughter to a poor man,” thought Eustace, when he meditated this vital question; “for his soul seems to me so pure and noble as to be above all consideration of worldly wealth; and then Helen’s simple habits fit her for a poor man’s wife. But I cannot think that he would consent to an alliance with a man of low origin, or of unknown origin, which to that proud and pure mind would seem worse than the lowest, since it must bear the stigma of shame.” There were times when a hope--vague but exquisite--awoke in the young man’s breast as he pondered on the future. If he was nameless to-day, must he needs go nameless to the grave? Might he not win for himself a renown that would give grace and lustre to that simple family name of Thorburn, which he had seen on his grandfather’s tombstone? Was it only a foolish presumption, the besotted vanity of a young pedant, which buoyed him up and supported him in his hours of depression? Was that word _Parvenir_, which he had taken for himself as his motto, and cherished in secret as the watch-word of his life, only the formula of a braggart? Was that pleasant land of dreams, in which he was wont to take refuge when the world of realities seemed dark and dreary, only a fool’s paradise?