Michel was eighteen years old, he had a fiery heart, a restless, all-devouring temperament, vast pride, and an enterprising spirit. But his heart was as pure as his age, and his happiness found him chaste and prostrate in religious adoration. All his jealousy, all his insulting suspicions vanished. It no longer occurred to him to wonder how a person so austere in her morals, who was supposed never to have had a lover, could suddenly fall in love at first sight with a child like him, and tell him so with such absolute candor. He was conscious of nothing save the joy of being loved, an enthusiastic and unbounded gratitude, a fervent, blind adoration. From Agatha's arms he fell at her feet, and covered them with passionate, almost pious kisses. "No, no, not at my feet, on my heart!" cried the princess; and she held him there a long while in a fervent embrace, weeping freely. Her tears were so sincere--they had such a sacred eloquence of their own--that Michel felt a great wave of sympathy. His heart swelled and he burst into sobs; a divine joy banished all thought of earthly joy. He found that that woman aroused in him no profane desire; that he was happy and not excited in her arms; that to mingle his tears with hers, and to feel that he was loved by her, was happiness greater than all the transports of which his youth had dreamed; in a word, that he respected her even to dread, as he held her pressed against his heart, and that there never could be a thought between her and him which the angels might not read with a smile on their lips. He felt all this, confusedly without doubt, but so deeply, and with such a thrill of triumph, that Agatha never suspected the evil impulse of fatuous conceit which had brought him to her feet a few moments before. Thereupon Agatha, raising her lovely glistening eyes to heaven, her face pale in the moonlight, and as it were rapt in a divine ecstasy, cried, in a transport of joy: "O my God! how I thank Thee! This is the first moment of happiness that Thou hast given me; but I do not complain of having had to wait so long, for it is so great, so pure, so complete, that it effaces and redeems all the sorrows of my life!" She was so lovely, she spoke with such sincere enthusiasm, that Michel fancied that he had before him a saint of ancient days. "O my God! my God!" he exclaimed in a voice stifled by emotion, "I, too, bless Thee! What have I done to deserve such happiness? To be loved by her! Oh! it is a dream; I dread to wake!"