A week had passed since the interview of Madame de Hansfeld and M. de Morville at the Opera. M. de Morville, overcome by fresh melancholy, had not quitted his mother, who had again relapsed, and was suffering very acutely. He recollected, with a mixture of joy and bitterness, his conversation with Madame de Hansfeld: the cry that had escaped the princess had given him a faint hope of being loved by her, but this rendered the struggle which he had to maintain against duty still more painful. By a fatality which all men obey, his love increased in proportion to the insurmountable obstacles which separated him from Paula. For the very reason that he accomplished a painful sacrifice in flying her presence, he consoled himself by nursing this fatal passion deep in his heart's core: sometimes, he sought to revive his ancient love for Lady Melford, and attempted to rekindle the cold ashes of his former affection,--but in vain. In vain, too, did he ask himself, by what insensible operation he had so suddenly obliterated the deep sentiment which so lately occupied his whole heart--in vain did he ask himself the cause of his love for Madame de Hansfeld. "No doubt she was remarkably beautiful--but as to her heart, her mind, he knew nothing of them. In his sole conversation with the princess, she had been disdainful--ironical--cold." In this scrutiny into the causes of his passion, M. de Morville forgot the most essential--his letters to Madame de Hansfeld, when he had detected, by a singular intuition of love, nearly all those emotions which had so strongly agitated her. If it be true that we often love from the sacrifices we have made for the object beloved, certain gifted souls love in consequence of the elevation of the feelings with which they are inspired. Thus De Morville owed to his love for Madame de Hansfeld inspirations of the noblest kind. If it be objected that young, handsome, sensible, sensitive, and surrounded by temptations, M. de Morville must have been another Scipio, to devote himself to an impossible love, after having remained so long faithful to the memory of a beloved woman, we reply that if these instances of phenomenal constancy are sometimes met with, it is particularly amongst young, handsome, sensible, sensitive men, surrounded by temptations. They have had success enough not to be faithless from false shame or to add from vanity one unit more to the amount of their successes in affairs of the heart. Then the very facility of the triumphs to which they might pretend keeps them from seeking them. In truth, without being absolutely satiated with pleasures, their first excitement having long abated, they become chary of the more sensitive enjoyments, and feel happy in consecrating to them the greater portion of their existence.