feeling always is? That if it were necessary for me to live there, and in such fashion, I should be too much out of my element, too overpowered! These are trifles. I mention them to you because they represent a whole type of customs, an entire social code. Do not say that you will not impose those customs on your wife, that you will liberate her from that code. You could not do it. To-day, as a bachelor, and because you are an officer, you have been able to simplify your life a great deal. But your wife would not be merely the companion of Monsieur de Claviers-Grandchamp, a simple lieutenant of dragoons, stationed at Saint-Mihiel, she would be also the daughter-in-law of the Marquis de Claviers-Grandchamp, who lives in a veritable palace in Paris, and who has a historic château in the Oise. He is a widower. He would require, and he would have a right to require, his daughter-in-law, with him and for him, to do the honors of those princely residences. And besides, he would begin by not accepting me. You have talked so much to me about him! I know him so well, without having seen him. Not for nothing do you call him the 'Émigré.' So many times you have exerted yourself to prove to me that he is not a man of our time; that he has the pride, the religious veneration of his race and of old France. And such a man would consent that his heir, the only survivor of his four sons, should take for his wife the widow of an officer who was the son of a physician, herself the daughter of a provincial notary, who, before she became Madame Olier, bore the name of Mademoiselle Barral? Never! To marry me, my friend, would be first of all to quarrel with your father, and, more or less, with all your relations and your whole social circle. What do you care? you will say. When two people love, they suffice for each other. That is true and it is not true. You would suffer death and torture that I should be humiliated, even in trifles, that I should not have the rank due to your wife, being your wife. I should suffer to see you suffer, and perhaps--I do not make myself out any better than I am--on my own account. People are so ingenious in all societies in wounding those whom they look upon as intruders. If we should have children, would they feel that they were really the brothers and sisters of my boy, of a poor little Olier, they who would be Claviers-Grandchamps? And if--But what's the use of enumerating the miseries comprised in that cruel, wise, profoundly significant word--mésalliance. No. I will not be your wife, my friend, and the day will come when you will thank me for having defended you against yourself, for having defended us--dare I say it?--But not effectively, for I could not prevent your saying words which are destined to break off forever, for a long time at all events, relations so pleasant as ours.--So pleasant!" she repeated. And then, with something very like a sob: "Oh! why, why did you speak so to me again?"