There are some lying souls, my dear master, who excel in excusing by fine motives their most villainous actions. If I were of this number I could make a merit of having insisted that the marquis should not recall his wife. Surely I knew the full import of my response and of the resolution that M. de Jussat was about to take. I knew that, if he informed the marquise, she would arrive by the first train, and I also knew Charlotte well enough to be assured that she would come with her mother. I should see her again, I should have a supreme opportunity to reawaken in her the love of which I had surprised the proof. I could say that it was loyalty on my part, the advice to leave Mme. de Jussat in Paris. I should have the appearance of loyalty. Why? If I were not convinced that there is no effect without a cause and no loyalty without a secret egoism, I should recognize a horror in using to the profit of a culpable passion the noblest of sentiments, that of a sister for a brother. Here is the naked truth: in trying to dissuade M. de Jussat, I was convinced that all effort to regain the heart of Charlotte would be useless. I foresaw in this return only certain humiliation. Worn out by these long months of internal struggle, I no longer felt the strength to maneuver. There was then no virtue in representing to the marquis the inconveniences, the dangers even, of the stay of these two women in the château, near an invalid who might communicate to them his disease. “And how about me?” responded he ingenuously, “am I not exposed every day? But you are right for Charlotte; I will write that I do not want her.” “Ah! Greslon,” said he two days after, on the receipt of a telegram, “see what they do--read.” He handed me the dispatch which announced the arrival of Mlle. de Jussat and her mother. “Naturally,” moaned the hypochondriac, “she wanted to come, without thinking that I should be spared such emotions.” The marquis spoke to me in this way at two o’clock in the afternoon. I knew that the train left Paris at nine o’clock in the evening and arrived at Clermont toward five in the morning. Mme. de Jussat and Charlotte would be at the château before ten o’clock. I passed a fearful evening and night, deprived now of that philosophic tension, outside of which I float, a creature without energy, the sport of nervous and irresistible impressions. Good sense, however, indicated a very simple solution. My engagement would end the 15th of October. It was now the 5th. The child was convalescent. He had his mother and his sister with him. I could return home without any scruple and under any pretext. I could do it and I must--for the sake of my dignity as well as for my repose.