through the firs over our heads, Leoni would seem to wake suddenly from a dream, as if to another life. His heart would take fire, his passionate eloquence would overflow my heart. He would talk to the skies, the wind, the echoes, to all nature with enthusiastic fervor; he would take me in his arms and overwhelm me with delirious caresses; then he would weep with love on my bosom, and, growing calmer, would talk to me in the sweetest, most intoxicating words. Oh! how could I have failed to love that unequalled man, in his good and in his evil days? How lovable he was then! how beautiful! how becoming the sunburn was to his manly face, and with what profound respect it avoided the broad white forehead over the jet-black, eyebrows! How well he knew how to love and to tell his love! What a genius he had for arranging life and making it beautiful! How could I have failed to have blind confidence in him? How could I have failed to accustom myself to absolute submission to him? All that he did, all that he said, was good and wise and noble. He was generous, sensitive, refined, heroic; he took pleasure in relieving the destitution or the infirmities of the poor who knocked at our door. One day he jumped into a stream, at the risk of his life, to save a young shepherd; one night he wandered through the snowdrifts, surrounded by the most awful dangers, to assist some travellers who had lost their way and whose cries of distress we had heard. Oh! how, how could I have distrusted Leoni? how could I have conceived any dread of the future? Do not tell me again that I am credulous and weak; the most strong-minded of women would have been subjugated forever by those six months of love. As for myself, I was absolutely enslaved; and my cruel remorse for having abandoned my parents, the thought of their grief, grew fainter day by day, and, finally, vanished almost entirely. Oh! how great was that man's power! Juliette paused and fell into a melancholy reverie. A clock in the distance struck twelve. I suggested that she should rest. "No," said she, "if you are not tired of listening to me, I prefer to go on. I feel that I have undertaken a task that will be very painful for my poor heart, and that when I have finished I shall neither feel nor remember anything for several days. I prefer to make the most of the strength I have to-day." "Yes, you are right, Juliette," I said. "Tear the steel from your breast, and you will be better afterward. But tell me, my poor child, how it was that Henryet's strange conduct at the ball and Leoni's craven submission at a glance from him did not leave a suspicion, a fear in your mind?"