The breakfast which I ate, without spectators, with the ladies was one of the happiest repasts I ever remember. All my evils were then ended; I should be free after two days of this sweet captivity. Perhaps even, on leaving Hadgi-Stavros, an adorable slavery!... I felt that I was a poet like Gessner. I ate as heartily as Mrs. Simons, and I assuredly drank with more appetite. I gulped down the white wine of Aegina, as formerly the wine of Santorin. I drank to Mary-Ann's health, to her mother's, to my good parents' and to that of Princess Ypsoff. Mrs. Simons wished to hear the history of that noble stranger, and by my faith, I did not keep it secret. Good examples are never too well known. Mary-Ann gave charming attention to my recital. She thought that the Princess had done well, and that a woman ought to take her happiness wherever she found it. Proverbs are the wisdom of nations, and sometimes their success. I was cast upon the wind of prosperity, and I felt myself borne toward, I know not what terrestrial paradise. Oh, Mary-Ann! the sailors who traverse the ocean have never had for guides two stars like your eyes! I was seated before her. Passing the wing of a fowl to her, I leaned so near her that I saw my image reflected in her eyes. I found I looked well, Monsieur, for the first time in my life! The frame set off the picture so well. A strange thought seized me. I felt that I had surprised, in this incident, a decree of destiny. It seemed to me that the beautiful Mary-Ann carried in the depths of her heart the image which I had discovered in her eyes. All this was not love, I know it well, I wish neither to accuse myself, nor to appropriate to myself a sentiment which I have never felt; but it was a firm friendship, and which would suffice, I thought, for a man about to enter the wedded state. No turbulent emotion stirred my heart, but I felt it melting slowly like a piece of wax in the warmth of a genial sun. Under the influence of this reasonable ecstasy, I related to Mary-Ann and her mother the history of my life. I described to them the paternal mansion, the great kitchen where we all ate together; the copper sauce-pans hanging on the wall according to size; the strings of hams and sausages which hung in the inside of the chimney; our modest, and often hard life: the future of each of my brothers; Henri ought to succeed papa; Frederic was learning the tailor's trade; Frantz and Jean-Nicholas had had positions since they were eighteen; the one as corporal, the other, as quarter-master sergeant. I told them of studies, my examinations, the little successes which I had enjoyed at the University, the beautiful future of professor to which I could lay claim, with three thousand francs income, at least. I do not know to what point my recital interested them, but I took great pleasure in it, and I stopped to drink from time to time.