"Mme. Aubry came to see me this evening secretly. She began by throwing her wretched arms round my neck, which displeased me very much. Then, to the accompaniment of a thousand jeremiads about herself—which I will spare you—she begged me to stop her relations on the brink of ruin. This is what she has heard, through listening at doors, according to her pretty habit: The ladies are trying to get permission to transfer all their property to a community at Rennes, so as to do away with the difference of fortune which separates you and Marguerite. As they can’t make you rich, they will make themselves poor. I thought it impossible to let you remain ignorant of this determination, which is equally worthy of those generous souls and of those Quixotic heads. You will forgive my adding that it is your duty to put an end to this design at any cost. I need not point out the regrets it will infallibly bring to our friends, nor the terrible responsibility it will throw on you. That you will see at a glance. If, my friend, you can from this moment accept the hand of Marguerite, everything will end in the best way possible. But in that respect you have tied yourself by an engagement which is not the less binding because it was made imprudently and blindly. There is then only one thing for you to do—to leave this country and resolutely extinguish all the hopes that your presence here must inevitably encourage. When you are no longer here I shall have less difficulty in bringing these two children to reason." "Very well. I am ready. I will go this very night." "Good!" she said. "When I give you this advice I obey a very rigorous law of honour. You have made the last moments of my long solitude pleasant, and you have given me back the illusion of the sweet attachments of life, which I had lost for so many years. In sending you away I make my last sacrifice; it is immense." She rose and looked at me for a moment without speaking. "At my age we do not embrace young people," she continued, smiling sadly; "we bless them. Adieu, dear child, and thank you. May God keep you!" I kissed her trembling hands, and she left me hastily. I hurriedly prepared for my departure, and then wrote a few lines to Mme. Laroque. I begged her to renounce a decision the effect of which she could not foresee, and which, for my part, I was determined to have no share in. I gave her my word—which she knew she could rely on—that I would never accept my happiness at the cost of her ruin. And I finished—for the sake of dissuading her from her fantastic project—by speaking vaguely of a future which might bring me fortune.