"Sir," said I, "nothing is further from my liking than an artificial morality, but I would avoid even the appearance of being cheaply vicious. Do not weigh out the largest possible measure of dishonesty to the smallest possible quantum of correction. If you must depart from that path of virtue towards which we should all direct our best endeavours, do so in a manner that will at least command the admiration of gentlemen and the leniency of a Divine Being, who may consider the frailty of the natural man, but never the tortuous conclusions of his compromising intellect." He was apparently sensible of my kindly advice, but I soon discovered that he not only disregarded it, but was endeavouring to do me an ill turn with the Commissary by directing his warped and jealous suspicions towards my innocent attentions to his wife. The word "innocent" I use advisedly, and lest the reader have any doubt now or hereafter as to my intention touching the fair Madame Provost, let me assure him I can lay my hand on my heart and aver I never at any time held any warmer feeling towards her than the sympathy of an exile towards a prisoner. That her stupidly jealous husband, fired by the insinuations of Sarennes, should distort mere civilities into serious intentions, and bear himself with such a ridiculous assumption of jaundiced suspicion that a cause for his uneasiness was readily invented by a scandal-loving garrison, was no doing of mine. Madame Prevost, with all her charm, had neither experience nor knowledge in such affairs; she was simply a woman profoundly unhappy and profoundly ignorant of the world. Could I have honestly offered her my affections as well as my sympathies, I might have done so, and had them as honestly returned; but no woman had ever awakened a throb in my heart since I bade farewell to one in the rue Dauphine in Paris. She still remained at once my hope and my despair; and, so long as she lived, other women were as dead to me. I lay claim to no great fortitude, to no heroic self-denial--it is seldom a man has attained the results of virtue with as little conscious effort as I was called upon to exercise. But the mere knowledge of the integrity of my motives was not sufficient to protect them from the idle gossip of the town, and this inconvenience led to an abrupt termination of our intercourse in the following manner: One afternoon, when amusing myself and Mme. Prevost by singing snatches of old songs, I had ended a favourite of hers with a telling accompaniment and the effective words, "J'ai perdu mon coeur volage, Mon honneur, mon avantage, De moi ne me parle plus," when I was surprised by a burst of pretended applause, and turned to find M. Prevost facing me with a malicious air. "Believe me, M. le Lieutenant, you have my sincerest sympathy," he cried, with mock emphasis. [Illustration: "M. le Lieutenant, you have my sincerest sympathy!"] "Upon what, sir?" "Upon the loss of that inestimable jewel, your honour."