"Why should I hesitate to assure you again and again that when I learned your kind consideration for me, and remembered how miserable and wretched you were, I no longer felt for you the calm feelings of friendship? And certainly, M. Germain," added Rigolette, smilingly, while a rosy blush mantled her intelligent features, "if I had a friend now I wished to see well married, I should be very sorry indeed to recommend her choosing you, because, because--" "You would marry me yourself!" exclaimed the delighted young man. "You compel me to tell you so myself, since you will not ask it of me." "Can this be possible?" "It is not from not having put you in the direct path more than once to make you understand. But you will not take a hint, and so, sir, I am compelled to confess the thing myself. It is wrong, perhaps; but, as there is no one but yourself to reprove my boldness, I have less fear; and then," added Rigolette, in a more serious tone, and with tender emotion, "you just now appeared to me so greatly overcome, so despairing, that I could no longer repress my feelings; and I had vanity enough to believe that this avowal, frankly made and from my heart, would prevent you from being unhappy in future. I said to myself, 'Until now I had been able to amuse or comfort him--' Ah, _mon Dieu!_ what is the matter?" exclaimed Rigolette, seeing Germain conceal his face in his hands. "Is not this cruel?" she added; "whatever I do, whatever I say, you are still as wretched as ever, and that is being too unkind--too selfish; it is as if it were you only who suffered from sorrows!" "Alas, what misery is mine!" exclaimed Germain, with despair; "you love me when I am no longer worthy of you." "Not worthy of me? Why, how can you talk so absurdly? It is just as if I said that I was not formerly worthy of your friendship because I had been in prison; for, after all, I have been a prisoner also; but am I the less an honest girl?" "But you were in prison because you were a poor forsaken girl; whilst I--alas, what a difference!" "Well, then, as to prison, we shall neither of us ever have anything to reproach each other with. It is I who am the more ambitious of the two; for, in my position, I have no right to think of any person but a workman for my husband. I was a foundling, and have nothing but my small apartment and my good spirits, and yet I come and boldly offer myself to you as a wife." "Alas, formerly such a destiny would have been the dream--the happiness of my life! But now I am under the odium of an infamous accusation; and should I take advantage of your excessive generosity, your commiseration, which no doubt misleads you? No, no!"