"Oh, no!--I accuse you not--that would be to imply that jealousy were a crime, and Heaven knows I had need be indulgent towards a sentiment under whose bitterest torments I have myself writhed." "You are under a gross error, madam, if you suppose that we stand upon equal grounds as regards the indulging such a passion as jealousy? Whether I am faithful to you or not, in no degree affects your consideration with society. But that I, who have sacrificed every thing for you, should be exposed to fresh ridicule!--I tell you," continued M. de Brévannes, rising from his chair, his teeth clenched, and his hands compressed with rage,--"that at the very supposition I can no longer command myself!" and as though unable to master the boiling rage which shook his frame and inflamed every feature, he commenced rapidly pacing the room. "You speak truly, Charles," said Bertha, sorrowfully, "our jealousy is not the same. Mine springs from my heart, yours from your pride; but it matters not, and I respect it equally. Have you ever once heard me complain of the seclusion in which I live? Except my father, whom you permit me to visit twice a-week, and a few members of your own family it is your pleasure I should receive, I live entirely alone. Oh, let me hasten to thank you for granting me the happiness of communing with my own thoughts undisturbed by the great and the gay!" "Yet all this enjoyment does not prevent your finding the time long and tedious; and every body knows the effects solitude and want of occupation produce in the minds of females." "But I am never unoccupied--never for an instant. You know how passionately fond I am of music; then I draw, I read. As for the solitude, your being more at home does not depend upon me." While Madame de Brévannes was speaking, her husband had approached the window, and mechanically opened the curtains drawn before it. He observed on the other side of the street, on the first floor of the house opposite his own, lights in the window corresponding to the one by which he stood, and through the glass he could discern the outline of a man attentively gazing from that window. It was now nearly five o'clock in the morning, all was dark without, and the street was perfectly deserted; what object of interest, then, could the individual opposite have in thus keeping watch, unless it were to reconnoiter the windows of Madame de Brévannes' apartment, doubtless the only one throughout the house in which a light was burning at that unusual hour? One of those absurd suspicions which enter only into the brain of jealous _deceivers_ (a class essentially distinct from that of jealous _deceived_)--we repeat that a suspicion of the most absurd description all at once entered the mind of M. de Brévannes, who, turning quickly round towards his wife, and looking at her with angry glances and threatening countenance, exclaimed,--