And then, too, you will help him grow old. You are my witness that I have never complained. I have never attempted to impose upon you the exactions of my selfishness. But why should I not confess it? Grandchamp has sometimes seemed very empty to me, and the house on Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré--very empty. My friends are going, one after another, witness my poor Charles. At my age one is weary of burying, weary of surviving. You will help me to drive away these black devils. We will not part any more.--But what's the matter?" "The matter is," the young man replied, "that I cannot bear to hear you talk like this." He had made a gesture to stop the marquis, and he let a cry of pain escape him, of which he had at least an explanation to give, although it was not the true one. Whatever the cost, he felt that he must interrupt an effusion which caused him too much suffering, and a declaration of principles which were so unwittingly but so fiendishly ironical when addressed to him, the child of sin, the nobleman by imposture. It was necessary to have done with it. "No," he insisted, "I cannot. This life together that you speak of, you will not care to live with me when I have told you what I am bound to tell you. The other day, during our conversation in the forest, to which you just referred, I spoke to you about a marriage. It is going to take place. Since last Tuesday I have been engaged--" "Engaged?" cried the marquis. "Don't tell me, Landri, that it's to that Madame Olier." "It is to Madame Olier. I have asked her for her hand. She has promised it to me. We have exchanged our troths. She will be my wife." "You asked her for her hand?" M. de Claviers exclaimed. "Then you knew--" "That you would refuse your consent? Yes," said the young man. "And does Madame Olier know that I refused it?" "I did not tell her that I had spoken to you of her." "And she agreed to become engaged to you, without troubling herself about what I would do, your father?" "She had faith in me," replied Landri. Could he explain under what conditions of supreme grief, almost of agony, he and Valentine had united their destinies? And yet that M. de Claviers should judge her wrongfully, should take her for an adventuress, was terribly painful to him! He knew his way of thinking. He had still in his ears the words: "She must be very pure, very sensitive. She will never consent to marry you against your father's wish. If her ideas were not exalted to that point, you would not love her."--And he implored:-- "I ask you not to speak of her. As she is mine now, I cannot permit anybody to utter in my presence a word derogatory to her--not even you."