"Never. That resolution was irrevocable before I found you; it can bring no blame upon you." "And you really want me to stay with you?" "Do I want you to! Could I live without you now?" "Oh! how happy I am going to be, monsieur!" "Dear Nicette! no more _monsieur_, no more formal address! I am your friend, your lover, and you are the whole world to me! Call me Eugène, your Eugène!" The evening passed away in this blissful conversation. "I must go to my room now," said Nicette; "it is time to go to sleep, and you need it." "Oh! happiness has restored my health. But you are my nurse, and you must not leave me." She blushed and looked at me; but she had not the strength to deny me anything. "Dear Eugène," she said, "I am yours. This is surely the place where I owe the reward of your love." Oh! unalloyed ecstasy of true love, I had never known you before! Never until that day did I really exist! XXXVI GREAT EVENTS.--CONCLUSION A new dawn had risen for me; beside Nicette time fairly flew, and love alone remained. It seemed to me that I loved her more dearly every day. Sometimes the poor child feared that her happiness was only a dream. How keen our pleasures were! how sweet our intercourse! Nicette was no longer the poor flower girl whom I had known long before. Since she had known me, she had striven incessantly to leave behind her every trace of manners and mode of speech that might be unpleasant to me; she had struggled to acquire the indispensable knowledge that she lacked. During all the time that she had lived alone on my landing, she had devoted to study every instant that was not given to thoughts of me. The result was that she talked easily and expressed herself with facility; her manners were refined, her appearance simple, but modest; she did not hold herself perfectly stiff, or keep her eyes cast down, or assume the prudish airs which distinguished Pélagie--before she was my wife; but her demeanor was respectable, her glance sweet and expressive; her whole aspect was most attractive; and her heart--ah! her heart was a treasure! Six months had passed like a day since I had found Nicette; our happiness would have been perfect but for her occasional fits of melancholy, the cause of which I divined. "You are married," she often said to me; "perhaps it is very wrong of me to live with you. Suppose that you should despise me some day." "Dear Nicette! drive away these thoughts, which my heart repels. Let the world think and say what it will! If it blames me, it is wrong. In good faith, which of the two deserves to be despised, the wife who deceives her husband, or the mistress who is true to her lover?" But one morning, while we were breakfasting, there came a violent ring at my door. Nicette answered the bell and returned, followed by a woman whom I recognized: it was Justine, Pélagie's maid. My blood froze in my veins. Why had she come?