"Then you will succeed, for your way of suggesting might easily be called by another name. And it is not only the women who obey you. I told Lucille the other day that she was afraid of you, and she blazed up in such a fury of denial that I felt smaller than nature has made me. Her anger made her more beautiful than ever, and I was stupid enough to tell her so. She hates a compliment, you know." "Indeed, I have never tried her with one." Alphonse looked at me with grave surprise. "It is a good thing," he said, "that you do not love her. Name of God! where should I be?" "But it is with Madame and not Mademoiselle Lucille that we shall have to do this afternoon," I said hastily. Although he was more or less acknowledged as an aspirant to Lucille's hand, Giraud refused to come within the door when we reached the Hotel Clericy. "No," he answered; "they will not want to see me at such a time. It is only when people want to laugh that I am required." I found Madame quite calm, and all her thoughts were for Lucille. The more a man is brought into contact with maternal love, even if it bear in no way upon his own life, the better he will be for it--for this is surely the loftiest of human feelings. My own mother having died when I was but an infant, it had never been my lot to live in intimacy with women, until fate guided me to the Hotel Clericy. At no time had I felt such respect for that quiet woman, Madame de Clericy, as on this afternoon when widowhood first cast its sable veil over her. "Lucille," she said at once, "must not be allowed to grieve for me. She has her own sorrow to bear, for she loved her father dearly. Do not let her have any thought for me." And later, when the gods gave me five minutes alone with Lucille herself-- "You must not," she said, her face drawn and white, her lips quivering, "you must not let mother think that this is more than I can bear. It falls heavier upon her." I blundered on somehow during those two days, making, no doubt, a hundred mistakes; for what comfort could I offer? What pretence could I make to understand the feelings of these ladies? My task was not so difficult as I had anticipated in regard to the grim coffin lying at Passy. To spare the other, both ladies agreed with me separately that the Vicomte should be buried from Passy as quietly as possible, and Lucille overlooked the fact that the suggestion came from such an unwelcome source as myself. So, amid the wild excitement of July, 1870, we laid Charles Albert Malaunay, Vicomte de Clericy, to rest among his ancestors in the little church of Senneville, near Nevers. The war fever was at its height, and all France convulsed with passionate hatred for the Prussian.