"Have you learned anything distressing, or are you ill?" his wife timidly asked him, while Rosalie undressed her. He made no reply. "You may go," said Madame de Merret to her maid; "I will put on my curl-papers myself." She divined some catastrophe simply from the expression of her husband's face, and she preferred to be alone with him. When Rosalie was gone, or was supposed to be gone, for she stayed for some moments in the corridor, Monsieur de Merret took his stand in front of his wife, and said to her coldly: "Madame, there is some one in your closet?" She looked at her husband calmly, and replied simply: "No, monsieur." That "no" tore Monsieur de Merret's heart, for he did not believe it; and yet his wife had never seemed to him purer and more holy than she seemed at that moment. He rose to open the closet door; Madame de Merret took his hand, stopped him, looked at him with a melancholy expression, and said in a voice strangely moved: "If you find no one, reflect that all is at an end between us!" The indescribable dignity of his wife's attitude reawoke the gentleman's profound esteem for her, and inspired in him one of those resolutions which require only a vaster theatre in order to become immortal. "No," he said, "I will not do it, Josephine. In either case, we should be separated forever. Listen; I know all the purity of your soul, and I know that you lead the life of a saint, and that you would not commit a mortal sin to save your life." At these words, Madame de Merret looked at her husband with a haggard eye. "See, here is your crucifix; swear to me before God that there is no one there, and I will believe you; I will never open that door." Madame de Merret took the crucifix and said: "I swear it." "Louder," said the husband, "and repeat after me: 'I swear before God that there is no one in that closet.'" She repeated the words without confusion. "It is well," said Monsieur de Merret, coldly. After a moment's silence: "This is a very beautiful thing that I did not know you possessed," he said, as he examined the crucifix of ebony encrusted with silver and beautifully carved. "I found it at Duvivier's; when that party of prisoners passed through Vendôme last year, he bought it of a Spanish monk." "Ah!" said Monsieur de Merret, replacing the crucifix on the nail. And he rang. Rosalie did not keep him waiting. Monsieur de Merret walked hastily to meet her, led her into the embrasure of the window looking over the garden, and said to her in a low voice: "I know that Gorenflot wants to marry you, that poverty alone prevents you from coming together, and that you have told him that you would not be his wife until he found some way to become a master mason. Well, go to him, and tell him to come here with his trowel and his tools. Manage so as not to wake anybody in his house but him; his fortune will exceed your desires. Above all, go out of this house without chattering, or----"