After reading the letter, Adeline handed it to Sans-Cravate, who read it in his turn, then looked his sister in the eye. They understood each other without a word, and Adeline immediately wrote to Albert's father the following reply: "I am grateful for your kindness, monsieur, but I do not desire nor can I accept anything from you. What I desired was Albert's love, and his name for my child. Heaven has denied me these, and the money you offer me now would seem to be the price of my dishonor." Adeline gave the letter to her brother to read. "Well done!" he cried; "sacrebleu! I couldn't have done it better myself." Monsieur Vermoncey's messenger went away with the letter, and since then they had heard nothing more from him. Sans-Cravate did his utmost to cheer his sister, to bring an occasional smile to her lips; but his task was the more difficult because he himself was oppressed by a burden of grief which he could not succeed in dislodging. At night, when he went home to Adeline, and sat down with her, intending to divert her by describing some incidents that he had witnessed during the day, his thoughts would go back to the past; after he had said a few words, he would fall into a profound reverie, and seem to forget that his sister was by his side. One evening, when he had been for a long time lost in thought, Adeline went to him, laid her hand gently on his shoulder, and said: "You too have troubles, my dear, besides those I have caused you. I remember what you said to me, coming from Lagny: 'I have troubles of my own, and I'll tell you about them some day.'--Has not that day come? I can't promise to comfort you, but I shall understand your suffering, and it is something to have a friend who understands what we feel." Sans-Cravate gazed sadly at his sister, kissed her on the forehead, ran his hands through his hair, and said: