"The time for such suspicions is past. If Eugénie still cherishes them, it will lower her in my estimation. She is twenty-two years of age. She has a good deal of heart and an elevated mind, and is capable of deciding her own destiny. I therefore approve of your plan. If she loves you, she will have the courage to avow it to her parents. If she does not love you, she has sufficient courage to make it evident to you." "How I wish the question already decided!" "No youthful impulsiveness! You need more than ever to be extremely cautious while feeling your way. Your situation is one of great delicacy. Act, but with deliberation." Such was pretty nearly the advice I gave Louis, often stopping to give vent to my grief, which was as profound as ever. He left me quite comforted. Though he did not say so, for fear of being deceived, he thought Eugénie loved him, and believed, with her on his side, he should triumph over every obstacle. When a person is in love, he clings to hope in spite of himself, even when all is evidently lost. CHAPTER XXV. ALL IS LOST!-THE PROSPECT BRIGHTENS. Louis spent several evenings in succession with me. He briefly related how the day had passed, and afterwards took up the different events, and enlarged upon them. He often found enough to talk about for hours upon the sometimes ungrateful theme. I can still see him sitting opposite my mother and myself in the arbor in the little garden behind our house. Everything was calm and delightful around us in those beautiful autumn evenings. Louis alone was troubled. In vain we tried to restore peace to his soul: it was gone! I never comprehended so thoroughly all the power of love as then. The profound sadness in which I was at that time overwhelmed rendered me inaccessible to such passionate outbreaks--such fits of elevation and depression as Louis was then subject to. I gazed at him with a cool, dispassionate eye, but with the affectionate compassion with which we regard a friend who is trying to make himself unhappy. I was astonished; sometimes I was even--yes, I acknowledge it--irritated to see how utterly he gave himself up to the passion he had allowed to develop so rapidly in his heart. Doubtless my poor friend remained resigned to the will of God, but not so completely as he thought. It is true, even when his mind was apparently the most agitated, we felt that piety was the overruling principle; but then, what a struggle there was between the divine Spirit, which always seeks to infuse calmness, and the gusts of passion that so easily result in a tempest!