“The devil! Since the thing is decided, let us be done with it. I warn you that I will send word to Ramond, and that he will be here to-morrow at three o’clock.” She listened in silence, her eyes fixed on the ground. Neither seemed to wish to touch upon the question as to whether the marriage had really been decided on or not, and they took the standpoint that there had been a previous decision, which was irrevocable. When she looked up again he trembled, for he felt a breath pass by; he thought she was on the point of saying that she had questioned herself, and that she refused this marriage. What would he have done, what would have become of him, good God! Already he was filled with an immense joy and a wild terror. But she looked at him with the discreet and affectionate smile which never now left her lips, and she answered with a submissive air: “As you please, master. Send him word to be here to-morrow at three o’clock.” Pascal spent so dreadful a night that he rose late, saying, as an excuse, that he had one of his old headaches. He found relief only under the icy deluge of the shower bath. At ten o’clock he left the house, saying he would go himself to see Ramond; but he had another object in going out—he had seen at a show in Plassans a corsage of old point d’Alençon; a marvel of beauty which lay there awaiting some lover’s generous folly, and the thought had come to him in the midst of the tortures of the night, to make a present of it to Clotilde, to adorn her wedding gown. This bitter idea of himself adorning her, of making her beautiful and fair for the gift of herself, touched his heart, exhausted by sacrifice. She knew the corsage, she had admired it with him one day wonderingly, wishing for it only to place it on the shoulders of the Virgin at St. Saturnin, an antique Virgin adored by the faithful. The shopkeeper gave it to him in a little box which he could conceal, and which he hid, on his return to the house, in the bottom of his writing-desk. At three o’clock Dr. Ramond presented himself, and he found Pascal and Clotilde in the parlor, where they had been awaiting him with secret excitement and a somewhat forced gaiety, avoiding any further allusion to his visit. They received him smilingly with exaggerated cordiality. “Why, you are perfectly well again, master!” said the young man. “You never looked so strong.” Pascal shook his head. “Oh, oh, strong, perhaps! only the heart is no longer here.”