“You are right, sir, life is not a romance: it is, on the contrary, a very serious and positive matter. In proof of which, permit me to say that every instant of my time is occupied, and that I cannot lose one of them in useless discussions. For ten years my mother has been your slave. All that I suffered in this time my pride will never let you know. My mother now belongs to me, and I mean to keep her. What do you want of her? Her hair is gray, and your treatment of her has made great wrinkles on her forehead. She is no longer a pretty woman, but she is my mother!” They looked each other straight in the face as they stood in that narrow, squalid corridor. It was a fitting frame for a scene so humiliating. “You strangely mistake the sense of my words,” said the poet, deadly pale. “I know that your resources must be very moderate; I come, as an old friend, to see if I can serve you in any way.” “We need nothing. The work of my hands supplies us with all we require.” “You are very proud, my dear Jack; you were not so always.” “That is very true, sir, and also that your presence, that I once was forced to endure, has now become odious to me.” The attitude of the young man was so determined and so insulting, his looks so thoroughly carried out his words, that the poet dared not add one word, and descended the stairs, where his careful costume was strangely out of place. When Jack heard his last footfall, he returned to his room: on the threshold stood Ida, strangely white, her eyes swollen with tears and sleep. “I was there,” she said in a low voice; “I heard everything, even that I was old and had wrinkles.” He approached her, took her hands, and looked into the depths of her eyes. “He is not far away. Shall I call him?” She disengaged her hands, threw her arms around his neck, and with one of those sudden impulses that prevented her from being utterly unworthy, exclaimed, “You are right, Jack; I am your mother, and only your mother!” Some days after this scene, Jack wrote the following letter to M. Rivals:—