piously, and that which passed in his soul during that cruel night, and that which he suffered during that struggle, ever rested a secret between him and God. {78} For you, scholar of the eighteenth century, it is an unpardonable weakness that of placing one's self humbly on one's knees before the Divine Majesty. Yet, thanks only to this weakness, Albert, in all the force of youth, resisted without failing before the most impetuous, the most irresistible of all our passions, and came forth victorious out of the rudest combat that he had ever given. He loved, passionately, Flaminia: Flaminia, beautiful, rich in heart and soul, full of all the merits, of all the virtues, that can entrance at the same time the heart, the soul, and the senses; Flaminia, who loved him with an equal ardor, and who confided herself to him absolutely and without reserve. He had over her an absolute power, and, far from using it, he subdued his passion, and, directing by a determined will the tumultuous waves of his heart, he traversed without shipwreck those tempests that are more ungovernable than the rage of the ocean. The strength with which he aided himself was that same weakness which makes you smile. Had he trusted only in himself, he would have fallen, because he was but a man; he implored the aid of him who is strength itself, and he vanquished. Faith was for him what the fortifying oil was with which the athletes rubbed their bodies before the struggle; and, not content with aiding him to overcome himself, she knew also how to dry his tears by the blessed aid of hope. For, at the same time that she showed him in all their barrenness the painful paths of duty, she let him see at the end of the journey, and as the price of his victory, that eternal union of souls which time itself is powerless to break. I know you to be prejudiced, my dear Frederick, on all that which touches religious questions; but, at the same time, I know you to be of too good faith not to acknowledge that there is truly something superhuman in a doctrine which gives such victories; neither shall I insist on the detail of the events which occurred during the six months that Albert yet passed by the side of Flaminia, for they would have no value in my recital. It would not, perhaps, be without a certain interest to follow the developments of that affection, so completely purified from all earthly thoughts; but, as there are certain situations where a look, a smile, takes the proportions of a veritable event, it would be necessary for me to enter into the very slightest points of its psychology. On learning the gravity of the wounds of his brother, Adolph Shraun had come in all haste to the palace Balbo. Antonia failed not to produce in his heart an impression as profound, but more decisive, than that which Flaminia had already aroused in his brother. As he knew that the project of an alliance would be joyfully received in the two families, Antonia