I will not weary you with the particulars of the law suit instituted by the d’Ionis family against the d’Aillanes. The conversation I have just reported will suffice to explain my story. It concerned an estate of five hundred thousand francs, that is to say, almost all the funded fortune of our beautiful client. M. d’Ionis made a very bad use of the immense wealth that he possessed on his own side of the house. He was given over to dissipation, and the doctors allowed him but two years to live. It was quite possible that he would leave his widow more debts than money. Should Madame d’Ionis renounce the benefit of the law suit, she would then incur the risk of falling from a state of opulence, into a condition of mediocrity to which she had not been brought up. My father pitied the d’Aillane family greatly, a family deserving the highest esteem, and which included a worthy gentleman, his wife and his two children. The loss of the law suit would plunge them into misery; but my father naturally preferred to devote himself to the future of his client and to preserve her from disaster. This was for him a true case of conscience; but he had recommended me not to urge this consideration with her. “Her soul is romantic and sublime,” said he, “and the more her personal interest is alleged, the greater pride and pleasure she will take in the joy of her sacrifice; but with the approach of age, her enthusiasm will disappear. Then look out for regrets; and look out also for the reproaches that she will justly heap upon us for not having wisely counselled her.” My father did not know that I was so much of an enthusiast in fact. Engaged in numberless affairs, he had confided to me the care of subduing the generous impulses of this admirable woman, by taking refuge behind pretended scruples which he only considered as accessories. It was a very good idea, but he had not foreseen any more than myself that I would share Madame d’Ionis’ opinion to such an extent. I was at an age when material wealth is of no value in the imagination; it is a period of a wealth of heart. And then this woman, who produced upon me the effect of a spark on powder; this despicable absent husband condemned by his physicians; the moderate circumstances which threatened her, and towards which she smilingly stretched her arms—how did I know? I was an only son, my father possessed some fortune and I could also acquire one. I was only a _bourgeois_, who owed a position to a magistracy in the past, and in the present to the consideration attached to talent and probity; but we were in the midst of a philosophical period, and without thinking ourselves on the verge of a radical revolution, one could readily admit the idea of an impoverished woman of quality, marrying a man of lower condition in easy circumstances.