The following day, my father and I returned to Ionis. Our request was submitted to M. d’Aillane, who began by embracing me, after which he gave his hand to my father and said, with an air of thoroughly chivalric frankness: “Yes, _and thank you_!” I threw myself again into his arms and he added: “Wait, however, until my daughter consents, for above all I desire her happiness. As to myself, I give her to you without knowing whether she will be rich enough for you; for if she should be, I have decided that you are noble enough for her. You are incurring every risk. _Eh bien, mordieu!_ I wish to do as much and not fall behind the example you set me. You have no ambition for money, and for my part I have no prejudices in favor of nobility. So we both agree. I have your word and you have mine. Only I insist upon my daughter deciding the matter. And my dear M. Nivières, you must allow your son to pay his own addresses, for his love is so recent, that it depends upon him to prove its sincerity. As to his character and his talents, with those we are familiar, and there can be no objections on that score.” I was thus allowed to become a constant visitor at the château d’Ionis, and this was, as regards the past, the happiest time of my life. I loved, under the ordinary conditions of life, a being above the ordinary region of life, an angel of goodness, of sweetness, of intelligence and of ideal beauty. She did not leave me without hope and freely expressed her esteem and sympathy for me, but when I spoke of love, she seemed doubtful. “Do not deceive yourself,” said she, “have you never loved, before you met me, and more than you loved me, a certain lady whose name my brother has refused to tell me?” One day she said to me: “Do you not wear on your finger, a certain ring that you regard as a talisman, and if I were to ask you to throw it into the fountain, would you obey me?” “Certainly not,” I exclaimed, “I will never part with it, for it was you who gave it to me.” “I, what do you mean by that?” “Yes, it was you, do not try to conceal it any longer. It was you who enacted the role of the green lady to please Madame d’Ionis, who wished through you to pronounce her own ruin, and who thought she had found in me the person ‘worthy of belief,’ whose testimony her husband required. It was you who, yielding to her idea, appeared before me in fantastical guise, and prescribed my duty in conformity with your delicacy and pride of soul.”