"To-morrow," said he, "I shall go to Plobsheim as I told you. You have just made me a proposition; I will make you another when I arrive." "What do you mean?" cried the young girl. "I mean that, if you are willing, we can arrange the matter." "If this proposition affects my honor, it is useless to make it." "It does not." "Then you will be welcome at Plobsheim." And, bowing without hope but also without tears, she opened the door, crossed the dining-room, and passed out with a slight inclination of the head to the other guests. Neither the three men nor the boy could see her face, which was completely concealed in her hood. The commissioner of the Republic followed her; he watched the dining-room door until she had closed it, and then listened until he heard the wheels of her carriage roll away. Then, approaching the table, he filled his own glass and those of his friends with the entire contents of a bottle of _Liebfraumilch_, and said: "With this generous wine let us drink to the health of citizeness Clotilde Brumpt, the betrothed of Jean-Georges-Euloge Schneider." He raised his glass, and, deeming it useless to ask for an explanation which he probably would not give, his four friends followed his example. CHAPTER VI MASTER NICHOLAS This scene made a deep impression upon all present, varying according to their different personalities, but no one was more intensely moved than our young scholar. He had of course seen women before, but this was the first time that a woman had been revealed to him. Mademoiselle de Brumpt, as we have said, was marvellously beautiful, and this beauty had appeared to the boy under the most favorable circumstances. He experienced a strange emotion, a painful constriction of the heart, when, after the young girl's departure, Schneider, raising his glass, had announced that Mademoiselle de Brumpt was his betrothed and would soon be his wife. What had passed in the salon? By what persuasive words had Schneider induced her to give such sudden consent? For the boy did not doubt from his host's tone of assurance that the girl had consented. Had she asked the private interview for the purpose of offering herself to him? In that case filial love must have been supreme to have induced the pure lily, the perfumed rose, to unite herself with this prickly holly, this coarse thistle; and it seemed to Charles that, were he her father, he would rather die a hundred deaths than buy back his life at the price of his daughter's happiness. Even as this was the first time that he had realized a woman's beauty, so it was the first time that he appreciated the abyss which ugliness can create between two people of opposite sexes. And just how ugly Euloge was, Charles now perceived for the first time. It was, moreover, an ugliness which nothing could efface! an ugliness in which was blended with the moral the fetid hideousness of one of those faces which, while still young, have been sealed with the seal of hypocrisy.