That evening a letter arrived from Aix. The old Marquis spoke out at last: Would Luc return home and marry Clémence de Séguy? Her father was more than willing, she was a good girl of rank and qualities, a match for the honour of the house, in every way suitable. Might not he formally request her hand? Luc put the letter down and set his lips. He had just decided to hug his chains, to be loyal to every tie, to fulfil every duty, to take up the life his ancestors had led--therefore he had no excuse to refuse this match, and Clémence shone brightly beside the tarnished image of Carola. He wrote immediately saying that if he obtained an appointment, or the sure promise of one, he would return to Aix to marry Mlle de Séguy, and as he sealed the letter he felt like a man who has made his own decision irrevocable. The suggestion was not unexpected; but even yesterday he would not have been sure of his answer. Now M. de Voltaire’s bold speech had shown him clearly enough his own mind. Later that day, when his letters were dispatched, he left the house and walked up and down the pleasant quays by the river, possessed by a great sense of peace and exaltation. It had been a day overbrimming with sunshine, and now, in the hour of twilight, there was a soft glow left over water, trees, buildings, and sky--a reflection of light; rosy, clear, tender, and melancholy. Luc passed by M. de Voltaire’s house near the Rue Bréa, and walked slowly on towards the island of the city and the great church of Notre-Dame de Paris with her two mighty towers. Here the houses began to get poorer and meaner, there were more beggars and fewer sedan-chairs, the shops were more frequent and dirty, the churches looked neglected. Luc paused to lean over the narrow wall of the embankment and look at the great river that widened here to divide into the arms that clasped the island and the church. The water swirled, deep and ruddy coloured from the last glow of the sun, round the piles of the bridge that led to the splendid porch of Notre-Dame; beyond the darkening pile of the church it rolled in a silver-grey flood between flat banks and isolated groups of buildings now beginning to show black against the paling sky. Luc was lost in deep, sweet, and nameless thoughts when he was roused by the practised whine of beggary loud and insistent in his ear. He turned to see a creature in the most miserable attire thrusting out a trembling, grasping hand for charity. Luc started, for the face of this being was so broken, tortured, disfigured (almost beyond likeness to humanity) by the most violent ravages of smallpox that it seemed more some kind of sad-beaten ape than a man.