It is, above all, when one loves with the candor and good faith of early youth that one yields himself tremblingly to the first interview which sounds a knell to all the cherished past. Why, at the very moment of happiness, should one sigh and fear? Poor mortals, it seems that accustomed to sorrow, we shall always be astonished at being happy. In truth, this astonishment passes with age and experience; then these delightful rendezvous do not cause us the same emotion; we regard them only as distractions, and laugh at the uneasiness, the embarrassment, which accompanied our first intercourse with the ladies. Ungrateful that we are, we mock at the source of our happiness, at those sweet sensations which time has dissipated, with all the other illusions of our youth, after the manner of the fox in the fable. "How awkward we were at eighteen years of age," we say; "how embarrassed and constrained in a tete-a-tete, trembling like a leaf as we went to the rendezvous; what a difference now, we go to them singing, we reach that which we desire more quickly, we are a hundred times more pleasing." Yes, but our hair is becoming grizzly, our figure has become rotund, and some rather deep lines are imprinted at the corners of our eyes. If the approach of long-desired happiness causes in love an inexplicable trouble, what should be the state of one who, all of a sudden, without having had even the slightest hope, finds himself in a position where he may obtain the greatest heights. Such was Urbain's situation; he loved Blanche with the delirium, the intoxication, which one experiences at nineteen for his first love, and he found himself at eleven o'clock at night alone with the object of his tenderness in a little chamber, separated from all neighbors, with the lovely child drawing the bolt and beginning to undress herself to go to bed. What lover at such a moment could preserve his reason? Poor Blanche, I tremble for thee! In truth thou hast a talisman, but I have no great faith in its power; above all, if you allow yourself to remain with Urbain in the situation in which he is placed. The young bachelor tremblingly paused, sighing and saying not a word he remained standing in a corner of the room, while Blanche prepared the bed, coming and going, jumping and laughing, and finally began to undress herself.