"There was another attraction which drew me towards you. I recognized in your character a certain power in sympathy with that power which I imagined lay dormant in myself, and not to be found among the _freluquets_ and _lions_ who were my more habitual associates. Do you not remember some hours of serious talk we have had together when we lounged in the Tuileries, or sipped our coffee in the garden of the Palais Royal?--hours when we forgot that those were the haunts of idlers, and thought of the stormy actions affecting the history of the world of which they had been the scene; hours when I confided to you, as I confided to no other man, the ambitious hopes for the future which my follies in the present, alas! were hourly tending to frustrate." "Ay, I remember the starlit night; it was not in the gardens of the Tuileries nor in the Palais Royal,--it was on the Pont de la Concorde, on which we had paused, noting the starlight on the waters, that you said, pointing towards the walls of the _Corps Legislatif_, 'Paul, when I once get into the Chamber, how long will it take me to become First Minister of France?'" "Did I say so?--possibly; but I was too young then for admission to the Chamber, and I fancied I had so many years yet to spare in idle loiterings at the Fountain of Youth. Pass over these circumstances. You became in love with Louise. I told you her troubled history; it did not diminish your love; and then I frankly favoured your suit. You set out for Aix-la-Chapelle a day or two afterwards; then fell the thunderbolt which shattered my existence, and we have never met again till this hour. You did not receive me kindly, Paul Louvier." "But," said Louvier, falteringly, "but since you refer to that thunderbolt, you cannot but be aware that--that--" "I was subjected to a calumny which I expect those who have known me as well as you did to assist me now to refute." "If it be really a calumny." "Heavens, man! could you ever doubt that?" cried De Mauleon, with heat; "ever doubt that I would rather have blown out my brains than allowed them even to conceive the idea of a crime so base?" "Pardon me," answered Louvier, meekly, "but I did not return to Paris for months after you had disappeared. My mind was unsettled by the news that awaited me at Aix; I sought to distract it by travel,--visited Holland and England; and when I did return to Paris, all that I heard of your story was the darker side of it. I willingly listen to your own account. You never took, or at least never accepted, the Duchesse de ------'s jewels; and your friend M. de ----- never sold them to one jeweller and obtained their substitutes in paste from another?"