I was silent for a moment; then feeling, in spite of myself, that this warning troubled me more than I could have believed, I said with brusque sincerity: “Why then, my dear Bernard, did you bring me here?” “Because I thought my sister had left. She was to have rejoined my father at Tours, and he was not expected here for a fortnight. Events have frustrated my plans. I am none the less easy on my sister’s account, knowing what kind of a man you are.” “Are you as easy on my account, Bernard?” said I, in a reproachful tone. “Yes,” he replied, with some emotion, “I am easy because you have sufficient strength of mind to say to yourself, this: A girl of heart and of worth has a right to be sued for by a man whose heart is free, and she would not feel much flattered some day to discover that she only owed this distinction to a chance resemblance.” I so well understood this answer that I added no more, and I resolved not to look too much at Mademoiselle d’Aillane, lest I should deceive myself. I even determined to go away, lest I should end by being too much disturbed by this fatal resemblance, and my fears were justified on the following day. I felt that I was falling frantically in love with Mademoiselle d’Aillane, that the vision of the Naiad was fading in her presence, and that Bernard perceived the fact with anxiety. I took my leave, pretending that my father had only allowed me twenty-four hours liberty. I had decided to open my heart to my parents, and to ask their permission to offer my soul and life to Mademoiselle d’Aillane. I did so, with the greatest sincerity. The recital of my past sufferings made my father laugh and my mother weep. However, when I had thoroughly described the state of despair, into which at times I had fallen, and which had made me contemplate the idea of suicide with a species of rapture, my father grew serious again, and cried, while he looked at my mother: “So, here is a child who has been a victim of monomania under our very eyes, and we never suspected it! And you thought, _mamie_, that he was hiding his flame for the beautiful d’Ionis who is so thoroughly alive, while he was wasting away for the beautiful d’Ionis who is dead, if it so be that she ever lived! Truly strange things come to pass in poets’ brains, and I was perfectly right to mistrust this devilish poetry from the very first. Well, let us give thanks to the beautiful d’Aillane who resembles the Naiad and who has cured our madman. We must marry him at any cost, and we must ask for her at once, before it is known whether she will have a dowry, for should such be the case she will consider herself too grand a lady to marry a lawyer. Why the deuce didn’t Madame d’Ionis confide the case of the liquidation to me? We would know how to act better than this old Parisian lawyer, who won’t get through with it in six months. Do they ever really work in Paris? They mix themselves up in politics and neglect their business.”