About two hours after midnight, yielding to fatigue, I longed to breathe the fresh air for a moment. I went down the dark staircase and into the garden, avoiding the _salon_ on the ground floor, where I had seen a light. The night was profoundly dark. As I approached the arbour at the end of the little inclosure, I heard a faint sound, and at the same moment a shadowy form detached itself from the foliage. I felt a sudden rapture; my heart leaped, and I saw the heavens fill with stars. "Marguerite!" I cried, holding out my arms. I heard a little cry, then my name murmured faintly, then silence ... and I felt her lips on mine. I thought that my soul was escaping from me. * * * * * I have given Hélène half my fortune. Marguerite is my wife. I close these pages forever. I have nothing more to intrust to them. What has been said of nations may be said of men: "Happy are those who have no history." * * * * * * * * *THE PORTRAITS OF OCTAVE FEUILLET* In spite of the fashionable popularity achieved by Octave Feuillet as early as the year 1855, a popularity which never waned to his last hour, it seems that his life, which we should have pictured excessively brilliant and public, was in reality quiet and retired. The author of "M. de Camors" and of the "Roman d’un Jeune Homme pauvre" was, as his portraits attest, melancholy of temperament and contemplative of mind, a man who was happiest in his own study, who preferred the distant echoes of his literary triumphs in his home, to noisy manifestations thereof in the world of social pleasure. [Illustration: OCTAVE FEUILLET (In 1850) After a drawing by the engraver Monciau] Feuillet was the official novelist of the Second Empire, the pet writer of the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. He was received at Court among the distinguished guests who had the _entrée_ at Compiègne and Fontainebleau. His plays and _proverbes_ were acted in the Imperial theatres, at fashionable watering-places, and on the miniature stages of marionettes. The Empress treated him with marked distinction. It is difficult to understand why an author so honoured and so much sought after should have left so few portraits—canvases, medallions, water-colours or engravings. Feuillet evidently was not lavish of his time in his sittings to artists, for neither Dubufe, nor Carolus-Duran, nor Winterhalter reproduced his features—a fact we find it almost hard to believe of a man who enjoyed the popularity of Feuillet. But we must accept the fact. [Illustration: OCTAVE FEUILLET (In 1879) After a sketch made in Geneva]