Then he offered her his glass, begging her to touch it with her lips and then drinking its contents with a full heart; after which he dashed it to pieces, so that no one should use it again, and carried off his betrothed, leaving me to think over the matter he had suggested, about which I felt I'm sure I don't know how. I had not yet felt myself all over about it; and it had never seemed to me that my nature was ardent enough to fall in love lightly, especially with so grave a girl as Thérence. I had escaped all annoyance at not being able to please Brulette, thanks to my lively nature, which was always willing to be diverted; but somehow, I could not think of Thérence without a sort of trembling in the marrow of my bones, as if I had been asked to make a sea-voyage,--I, who had never set foot on a river boat! "Can it be," thought I, "that I have fallen in love to-day without knowing it? Perhaps I ought to believe it, for here is Huriel urging me on, and his eye must have seen it in my face. Still I am not certain, because I feel half-suffocated, and love certainly ought to be a livelier thing than that." Thinking over all this, I reached, I couldn't tell you how, the ruined castle. That old heap of stones was sleeping in the moonlight as mute as those who built it; but a tiny light, coming from the room which Thérence occupied on the courtyard, showed that the dead were not the only guardians of the building. I went softly to the window, which had neither glass nor woodwork, and looking through the leaves that shaded it, I saw the girl of the woods on her knees saying her prayers beside the bed, where Charlot was sleeping soundly with his eyes tightly closed. I might live a thousand years and I should never forget her face as it was at that moment. It was that of a saint; as peaceful as those they carve in stone for the churches. I had just seen Brulette, radiant as the summer sun, in the joy of her love and the whirl of the dance; and here was Thérence, alone, content, and white as the moonlight of the springtide sky. Afar I heard the wedding music; but that said nothing to the ear of the woodland girl; I think she was listening to the nightingale as it sang its tender canticle in the neighboring covert. I don't know what took place within me; but, all of a sudden, I thought of God,--a thought that did not often come to me in those days of youth and carelessness; but now it bent my knees, as by some secret order, and filled my eyes with tears which fell like rain, as though a great cloud had burst within my head. Do not ask me what prayer I made to the good angels of the sky. I know it not myself. Certainly I did not dare to ask of God to give me Thérence, but I think I prayed him to make me worthier of so great an honor.