The determined obstinacy of M. de Brévannes would have failed before the haughty poverty of the old man, had not Bertha's life been compromised. A father's instinct is almost always admirably clear-sighted, and when this instinct is allied with excellent common sense, it attains to divination. Pierre Raimond anticipated his daughter's destiny. Still obliged to choose between the death of a beloved child, and a future, however dreaded, which might, perchance, be averted, the engraver consented at length to the marriage, which took place shortly after M. de Brévannes' return. Bertha had not for a moment doubted the love of her husband. Her heart--simple and good, noble and confiding--was unable to resist the unrelenting will of a man, whose energetic protestations had flattered and won her; and in her guileless vanity, the young girl asked herself, with a certain degree of pride, if M. de Brévannes must not have loved her to excess, when he pursued his suit with such unrelaxing tenacity. Poor Bertha, alas! confounded the proud obstinacy of an uncontrollable temper, which could not endure opposition, with the self-denial, the devoted persistence, of intense passion. M. de Brévannes was capable of employing every means--even those which had not apparently an honourable plea--to achieve his ends; but that attained, he was also capable of cruelly revenging those sacrifices which he had imposed on himself in order to triumph in a struggle in which his pride was more deeply interested than his love. With such an intractable temper, the day that followed his victory was seldom one of happiness; the ruder the attack, the more the resistance had lasted, the more his vanity suffered. In the warmth of action he forgot the wounds of his self-love; but after success he felt intensely those bleeding wounds, and his disposition again resumed its ascendancy. When the fever of his unbridled will, which had constrained M. de Brévannes to marry Bertha, had subsided, he began to regret his marriage very deeply. Yes, he was ashamed of his alliance with an obscure and poor girl, when he reflected on the wealthy alliances to which he might have aspired, and for which the charming qualities, the beauty, and pure mind of Bertha, were hardly a recompense. He believed that he was continually the butt of sarcastic comment, and could not find sufficient raillery to vindicate his ridiculous marriage of affection. M. de Brévannes was deceived. Several persons, when they saw him marry a lovely, virtuous, and poor girl, gave him credit for a generous and noble spirit, and admired him, and vaunted his singular disinterestedness, and he was absolved, by anticipation, from all the torments which he would inflict on a woman for whom he had _done so much_. Some regarded Bertha's conduct as a master-piece of trick and skill; others jeered at M. de Brévannes and his love-match, because they were of a class that mocks at all the world.