Time passed on, and Ferdinand’s passion increased with every hour. Three or four times in the week he found means to feast his eyes upon the object of his adoration, and the remaining days and nights were spent in trying to draw poetic inspiration from what threatened to be the source of something very nearly akin to madness. Ferdinand’s actual talent, however, was of such a perfectly ordinary stamp, that it profited in no degree by the strong element love afforded it, and one fine morning—when he least expected it—a blow so stunning was dealt him that his whole fabric of existence was well-nigh shivered to the earth. The proprietor of the paper wherein, for the last year or two, M. de Candolles had published anonymously the chief productions of his pen, suddenly told him that he should in future be obliged to refuse his contributions unless _signed by his own name_! M. de Candolles, he urged, was known in many _salons_ of the _beau monde_, and probably what he might write would be read by a good number of people, whereas the lucubrations of _Jaques Bargel_—Ferdinand’s _pseudonyms_—only occupied space, and brought neither fame nor money to the journal. M. de Candolles received the announcement, which went near to show destitution staring him in the face, with becoming fortitude. He would sooner have died than allow his name to be dragged forward into publicity; and at the thought of the elegant, aristocratical, disdainful lady of his worship discovering that he lived by writing _feuilletons_, he felt the very ground fail beneath his feet. Ferdinand was, after the circumstance we have just related, reduced to a species of misery even he had as yet not suspected. Unable to pay for the lodging, small and dirty as it was, that he had hitherto inhabited, he was now reduced to rent a small attic belonging to the collection of servants’ rooms in a tolerably good-looking house. The one thought that absorbed him was fear lest Blanche de Vouvray should discover the necessities of his life. This, and this alone, combated the wild passion wherewith she had inspired him. But he reckoned without feminine instinct and feminine curiosity. Blanche de Vouvray had not been half-a-dozen times in the same _salon_ with M. de Candolles, before she felt she was adored, and her next feeling was one of considerable anxiety to know how she should bring her slave to confess the charm. Blanche was a person of irreproachable conduct; but still, it was tiresome to be so evidently worshiped, and yet know nothing at all about it!