Agatha had suffered so much, the secrets she had had to keep had been so painful, that she had become very skilful in feigning, when it was necessary to take that trouble. Michel and the marquis admired the presence of mind which she displayed throughout the whole affair in extricating herself from an alarming position. But Fra Angelo became very sad, and Michel sought his couch much less light-hearted in his palace than he had been in his garret. The necessary precautions, the constant dissimulation to which he must resort, revealed the anxieties and perils of grandeur. The Capuchin feared that he would be corrupted in spite of himself. Michel was not afraid of being corrupted, but he felt that he must keep a close watch upon himself, and make himself small in order to preserve his peace of mind and domestic happiness, or else enter upon a struggle which would end only with his fortune or his life. He resigned himself to his fate. He determined that he would be prudent for his mother's sake until the time should come to be reckless for the sake of his country. But the period of excitement and untroubled happiness had already passed; duty was beginning: novels which are not cut short in the midst of the catastrophe become depressing on the last pages, that is to say, if they have the slightest semblance of probability. Certain persons of taste and vivid imagination insist that a novel should not have any end; that the reader should end it to suit himself. Certain others, persons of judgment and method, desire to see all the threads of the plot straightened out, and all the characters happily established for the rest of their lives, or else killed off, so that they need think no more about them. I agree with the former class, and I think that I might well have left the reader at the foot of the _Destatore's_ cross, reading the inscription which the _justicier d'aventure_ had written there. He could readily have imagined without my assistance the chapter which he has just read--and read with languid interest, I warrant--saying to himself: "I was sure of it; I expected it; that goes without saying." But I was afraid that I might have to deal with a reader of delicate sensibilities, who would have been made ill by being left in the classico-romantic company of a corpse and a vulture. Why are all _dénouements_ more or less lame and unsatisfactory? The reason is simple enough: it is because in real life there never is a _dénouement_; that the novel goes on forever, melancholy or placid, poetic or commonplace, and that the purely conventional can never wear the truthful aspect which arouses interest.