Villette

I.
FAUBOURG CLOTILDE.

Must I, ere I close, render some account of that Freedom and Renovation
which I won on the fête-night? Must I tell how I and the two stalwart
companions I brought home from the illuminated park bore the test of
intimate acquaintance?

I tried them the very next day. They had boasted their strength loudly
when they reclaimed me from love and its bondage, but upon my demanding
deeds, not words, some evidence of better comfort, some experience of a
relieved life—Freedom excused himself, as for the present impoverished
and disabled to assist; and Renovation never spoke; he had died in the
night suddenly.

I had nothing left for it then but to trust secretly that conjecture
might have hurried me too fast and too far, to sustain the oppressive
hour by reminders of the distorting and discolouring magic of jealousy.
After a short and vain struggle, I found myself brought back captive to
the old rack of suspense, tied down and strained anew.

Shall I yet see him before he goes? Will he bear me in mind? Does he
purpose to come? Will this day—will the next hour bring him? or must I
again assay that corroding pain of long attent—that rude agony of
rupture at the close, that mute, mortal wrench, which, in at once
uprooting hope and doubt, shakes life; while the hand that does the
violence cannot be caressed to pity, because absence interposes her
barrier!

It was the Feast of the Assumption; no school was held. The boarders
and teachers, after attending mass in the morning, were gone a long
walk into the country to take their goûter, or afternoon meal, at some
farm-house. I did not go with them, for now but two days remained ere
the Paul et Virginie must sail, and I was clinging to my last chance,
as the living waif of a wreck clings to his last raft or cable.

There was some joiners’ work to do in the first classe, some bench or
desk to repair; holidays were often turned to account for the
performance of these operations, which could not be executed when the
rooms were filled with pupils. As I sat solitary, purposing to adjourn
to the garden and leave the coast clear, but too listless to fulfil my
own intent, I heard the workmen coming.

Foreign artisans and servants do everything by couples: I believe it
would take two Labassecourien carpenters to drive a nail. While tying
on my bonnet, which had hitherto hung by its ribbons from my idle hand,
I vaguely and momentarily wondered to hear the step of but one
“ouvrier.” I noted, too—as captives in dungeons find sometimes dreary
leisure to note the merest trifles—that this man wore shoes, and not
sabots: I concluded that it must be the master-carpenter, coming to
inspect before he sent his journeymen. I threw round me my scarf. He
advanced; he opened the door; my back was towards it; I felt a little
thrill—a curious sensation, too quick and transient to be analyzed. I
turned, I stood in the supposed master-artisan’s presence: looking
towards the door-way, I saw it filled with a figure, and my eyes
printed upon my brain the picture of M. Paul.

Hundreds of the prayers with which we weary Heaven bring to the
suppliant no fulfilment. Once haply in life, one golden gift falls
prone in the lap—one boon full and bright, perfect from Fruition’s
mint.

M. Emanuel wore the dress in which he probably purposed to travel—a
surtout, guarded with velvet; I thought him prepared for instant
departure, and yet I had understood that two days were yet to run
before the ship sailed. He looked well and cheerful. He looked kind and
benign: he came in with eagerness; he was close to me in one second; he
was all amity. It might be his bridegroom mood which thus brightened
him. Whatever the cause, I could not meet his sunshine with cloud. If
this were my last moment with him, I would not waste it in forced,
unnatural distance. I loved him well—too well not to smite out of my
path even Jealousy herself, when she would have obstructed a kind
farewell. A cordial word from his lips, or a gentle look from his eyes,
would do me good, for all the span of life that remained to me; it
would be comfort in the last strait of loneliness; I would take it—I
would taste the elixir, and pride should not spill the cup.

The interview would be short, of course: he would say to me just what
he had said to each of the assembled pupils; he would take and hold my
hand two minutes; he would touch my cheek with his lips for the first,
last, only time—and then—no more. Then, indeed, the final parting, then
the wide separation, the great gulf I could not pass to go to
him—across which, haply, he would not glance, to remember me.

He took my hand in one of his, with the other he put back my bonnet; he
looked into my face, his luminous smile went out, his lips expressed
something almost like the wordless language of a mother who finds a
child greatly and unexpectedly changed, broken with illness, or worn
out by want. A check supervened.

“Paul, Paul!” said a woman’s hurried voice behind, “Paul, come into the
salon; I have yet a great many things to say to you—conversation for
the whole day—and so has Victor; and Josef is here. Come Paul, come to
your friends.”

Madame Beck, brought to the spot by vigilance or an inscrutable
instinct, pressed so near, she almost thrust herself between me and M.
Emanuel.

“Come, Paul!” she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like
a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I
thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to
feel what defied suppression, I cried—

“My heart will break!”

What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another
fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the
whisper, “Trust me!” lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep
sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet
with relief—I wept.

“Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it
will pass,” said the calm Madame Beck.

To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being
left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply,
harshly, and briefly—

“Laissez-moi!” in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but
life-giving.

“Laissez-moi!” he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial
muscles all quivering as he spoke.

“But this will never do,” said Madame, with sternness. More sternly
rejoined her kinsman—

“Sortez d’ici!”

“I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him,” she
threatened pertinaciously.

“Femme!” cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his
highest and most excited key, “Femme! sortez à l’instant!”

He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what
I had yet felt.

“What you do is wrong,” pursued Madame; “it is an act characteristic of
men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive,
injudicious, inconsistent—a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in
the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character.”

“You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me,” said he, “but
you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste,” he continued less
fiercely, “be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face,
and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends;
in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of
sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what
I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!”

This time, in the “leave me” there was an intonation so bitter and so
imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one
moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him
dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was
opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul’s face a quick
rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement;
it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his
hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the
room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.

The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to
wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to
time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more
myself—re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not
hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death.

“It made you very sad then to lose your friend?” said he.

“It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur,” I said. “All these weary days
I have not heard from you one word, and I was crushed with the
possibility, growing to certainty, that you would depart without saying
farewell!”

“Must I tell you what I told Modeste Beck—that you do not know me? Must
I show and teach you my character? You will have proof that I can be
a firm friend? Without clear proof this hand will not lie still in
mine, it will not trust my shoulder as a safe stay? Good. The proof is
ready. I come to justify myself.”

“Say anything, teach anything, prove anything, Monsieur; I can listen
now.”

“Then, in the first place, you must go out with me a good distance into
the town. I came on purpose to fetch you.”

Without questioning his meaning, or sounding his plan, or offering the
semblance of an objection, I re-tied my bonnet: I was ready.

The route he took was by the boulevards: he several times made me sit
down on the seats stationed under the lime-trees; he did not ask if I
was tired, but looked, and drew his own conclusions.

“All these weary days,” said he, repeating my words, with a gentle,
kindly mimicry of my voice and foreign accent, not new from his lips,
and of which the playful banter never wounded, not even when coupled,
as it often was, with the assertion, that however I might write his
language, I spoke and always should speak it imperfectly and
hesitatingly. “‘All these weary days’ I have not for one hour forgotten
you. Faithful women err in this, that they think themselves the sole
faithful of God’s creatures. On a very fervent and living truth to
myself, I, too, till lately scarce dared count, from any quarter;
but——look at me.”

I lifted my happy eyes: they were happy now, or they would have been
no interpreters of my heart.

“Well,” said he, after some seconds’ scrutiny, “there is no denying
that signature: Constancy wrote it: her pen is of iron. Was the record
painful?”

“Severely painful,” I said, with truth. “Withdraw her hand, Monsieur; I
can bear its inscribing force no more.”

“Elle est toute pâle,” said he, speaking to himself; “cette figure-là
me fait mal.”

“Ah! I am not pleasant to look at——?”

I could not help saying this; the words came unbidden: I never remember
the time when I had not a haunting dread of what might be the degree of
my outward deficiency; this dread pressed me at the moment with special
force.

A great softness passed upon his countenance; his violet eyes grew
suffused and glistening under their deep Spanish lashes: he started up;
“Let us walk on.”

“Do I displease your eyes much?” I took courage to urge: the point
had its vital import for me.

He stopped, and gave me a short, strong answer; an answer which
silenced, subdued, yet profoundly satisfied. Ever after that I knew
what I was for him; and what I might be for the rest of the world, I
ceased painfully to care. Was it weak to lay so much stress on an
opinion about appearance? I fear it might be; I fear it was; but in
that case I must avow no light share of weakness. I must own great fear
of displeasing—a strong wish moderately to please M. Paul.

Whither we rambled, I scarce knew. Our walk was long, yet seemed short;
the path was pleasant, the day lovely. M. Emanuel talked of his
voyage—he thought of staying away three years. On his return from
Guadaloupe, he looked forward to release from liabilities and a clear
course; and what did I purpose doing in the interval of his absence? he
asked. I had talked once, he reminded me, of trying to be independent
and keeping a little school of my own: had I dropped the idea?

“Indeed, I had not: I was doing my best to save what would enable me to
put it in practice.”

“He did not like leaving me in the Rue Fossette; he feared I should
miss him there too much—I should feel desolate—I should grow sad—?”

This was certain; but I promised to do my best to endure.

“Still,” said he, speaking low, “there is another objection to your
present residence. I should wish to write to you sometimes: it would
not be well to have any uncertainty about the safe transmission of
letters; and in the Rue Fossette—in short, our Catholic discipline in
certain matters—though justifiable and expedient—might possibly, under
peculiar circumstances, become liable to misapplication—perhaps abuse.”

“But if you write,” said I, “I must have your letters; and I will
have them: ten directors, twenty directresses, shall not keep them from
me. I am a Protestant: I will not bear that kind of discipline:
Monsieur, I will not.”

“Doucement—doucement,” rejoined he; “we will contrive a plan; we have
our resources: soyez tranquille.”

So speaking, he paused.

We were now returning from the long walk. We had reached the middle of
a clean Faubourg, where the houses were small, but looked pleasant. It
was before the white door-step of a very neat abode that M. Paul had
halted.

“I call here,” said he.

He did not knock, but taking from his pocket a key, he opened and
entered at once. Ushering me in, he shut the door behind us. No servant
appeared. The vestibule was small, like the house, but freshly and
tastefully painted; its vista closed in a French window with vines
trained about the panes, tendrils, and green leaves kissing the glass.
Silence reigned in this dwelling.

Opening an inner door, M. Paul disclosed a parlour, or salon—very tiny,
but I thought, very pretty. Its delicate walls were tinged like a
blush; its floor was waxed; a square of brilliant carpet covered its
centre; its small round table shone like the mirror over its hearth;
there was a little couch, a little chiffonnière, the half-open,
crimson-silk door of which, showed porcelain on the shelves; there was
a French clock, a lamp; there were ornaments in biscuit china; the
recess of the single ample window was filled with a green stand,
bearing three green flower-pots, each filled with a fine plant glowing
in bloom; in one corner appeared a guéridon with a marble top, and upon
it a work-box, and a glass filled with violets in water. The lattice of
this room was open; the outer air breathing through, gave freshness,
the sweet violets lent fragrance.

“Pretty, pretty place!” said I. M. Paul smiled to see me so pleased.

“Must we sit down here and wait?” I asked in a whisper, half awed by
the deep pervading hush.

“We will first peep into one or two other nooks of this nutshell,” he
replied.

“Dare you take the freedom of going all over the house?” I inquired.

“Yes, I dare,” said he, quietly.

He led the way. I was shown a little kitchen with a little stove and
oven, with few but bright brasses, two chairs and a table. A small
cupboard held a diminutive but commodious set of earthenware.

“There is a coffee service of china in the salon,” said M. Paul, as I
looked at the six green and white dinner-plates; the four dishes, the
cups and jugs to match.

Conducted up the narrow but clean staircase, I was permitted a glimpse
of two pretty cabinets of sleeping-rooms; finally, I was once more led
below, and we halted with a certain ceremony before a larger door than
had yet been opened.

Producing a second key, M. Emanuel adjusted it to the lock of this
door. He opened, put me in before him.

“Voici!” he cried.

I found myself in a good-sized apartment, scrupulously clean, though
bare, compared with those I had hitherto seen. The well-scoured boards
were carpetless; it contained two rows of green benches and desks, with
an alley down the centre, terminating in an estrade, a teacher’s chair
and table; behind them a tableau. On the walls hung two maps; in the
windows flowered a few hardy plants; in short, here was a miniature
classe—complete, neat, pleasant.

“It is a school then?” said I. “Who keeps it? I never heard of an
establishment in this faubourg.”

“Will you have the goodness to accept of a few prospectuses for
distribution in behalf of a friend of mine?” asked he, taking from his
surtout-pocket some quires of these documents, and putting them into my
hand. I looked, I read—printed in fair characters:—

“Externat de demoiselles. Numéro 7, Faubourg Clotilde, Directrice,
Mademoiselle Lucy Snowe.”

And what did I say to M. Paul Emanuel?

Certain junctures of our lives must always be difficult of recall to
memory. Certain points, crises, certain feelings, joys, griefs, and
amazements, when reviewed, must strike us as things wildered and
whirling, dim as a wheel fast spun.

I can no more remember the thoughts or the words of the ten minutes
succeeding this disclosure, than I can retrace the experience of my
earliest year of life: and yet the first thing distinct to me is the
consciousness that I was speaking very fast, repeating over and over
again:—

“Did you do this, M. Paul? Is this your house? Did you furnish it? Did
you get these papers printed? Do you mean me? Am I the directress? Is
there another Lucy Snowe? Tell me: say something.”

But he would not speak. His pleased silence, his laughing down-look,
his attitude, are visible to me now.

“How is it? I must know all—all,” I cried.

The packet of papers fell on the floor. He had extended his hand, and I
had fastened thereon, oblivious of all else.

“Ah! you said I had forgotten you all these weary days,” said he. “Poor
old Emanuel! These are the thanks he gets for trudging about three
mortal weeks from house-painter to upholsterer, from cabinet-maker to
charwoman. Lucy and Lucy’s cot, the sole thoughts in his head!”

I hardly knew what to do. I first caressed the soft velvet on his cuff,
and then. I stroked the hand it surrounded. It was his foresight, his
goodness, his silent, strong, effective goodness, that overpowered me
by their proved reality. It was the assurance of his sleepless interest
which broke on me like a light from heaven; it was his—I will dare to
say it—his fond, tender look, which now shook me indescribably. In the
midst of all I forced myself to look at the practical.

“The trouble!” I cried, “and the cost! Had you money, M. Paul?”

“Plenty of money!” said he heartily. “The disposal of my large teaching
connection put me in possession of a handsome sum with part of it I
determined to give myself the richest treat that I have known or
shall know. I like this. I have reckoned on this hour day and night
lately. I would not come near you, because I would not forestall it.
Reserve is neither my virtue nor my vice. If I had put myself into your
power, and you had begun with your questions of look and lip—Where have
you been, M. Paul? What have you been doing? What is your mystery?—my
solitary first and last secret would presently have unravelled itself
in your lap. Now,” he pursued, “you shall live here and have a school;
you shall employ yourself while I am away; you shall think of me
sometimes; you shall mind your health and happiness for my sake, and
when I come back—”

There he left a blank.

I promised to do all he told me. I promised to work hard and willingly.
“I will be your faithful steward,” I said; “I trust at your coming the
account will be ready. Monsieur, monsieur, you are too good!”

In such inadequate language my feelings struggled for expression: they
could not get it; speech, brittle and unmalleable, and cold as ice,
dissolved or shivered in the effort. He watched me, still; he gently
raised his hand to stroke my hair; it touched my lips in passing; I
pressed it close, I paid it tribute. He was my king; royal for me had
been that hand’s bounty; to offer homage was both a joy and a duty.

The afternoon hours were over, and the stiller time of evening shaded
the quiet faubourg. M. Paul claimed my hospitality; occupied and afoot
since morning, he needed refreshment; he said I should offer him
chocolate in my pretty gold and white china service. He went out and
ordered what was needful from the restaurant; he placed the small
guéridon and two chairs in the balcony outside the French window under
the screening vines. With what shy joy I accepted my part as hostess,
arranged the salver, served the benefactor-guest.

This balcony was in the rear of the house, the gardens of the faubourg
were round us, fields extended beyond. The air was still, mild, and
fresh. Above the poplars, the laurels, the cypresses, and the roses,
looked up a moon so lovely and so halcyon, the heart trembled under her
smile; a star shone subject beside her, with the unemulous ray of pure
love. In a large garden near us, a jet rose from a well, and a pale
statue leaned over the play of waters.

M. Paul talked to me. His voice was so modulated that it mixed
harmonious with the silver whisper, the gush, the musical sigh, in
which light breeze, fountain and foliage intoned their lulling vesper:

Happy hour—stay one moment! droop those plumes, rest those wings;
incline to mine that brow of Heaven! White Angel! let thy light linger;
leave its reflection on succeeding clouds; bequeath its cheer to that
time which needs a ray in retrospect!

Our meal was simple: the chocolate, the rolls, the plate of fresh
summer fruit, cherries and strawberries bedded in green leaves formed
the whole: but it was what we both liked better than a feast, and I
took a delight inexpressible in tending M. Paul. I asked him whether
his friends, Père Silas and Madame Beck, knew what he had done—whether
they had seen my house?

“Mon amie,” said he, “none knows what I have done save you and myself:
the pleasure is consecrated to us two, unshared and unprofaned. To
speak truth, there has been to me in this matter a refinement of
enjoyment I would not make vulgar by communication. Besides” (smiling)
“I wanted to prove to Miss Lucy that I could keep a secret. How often
has she taunted me with lack of dignified reserve and needful caution!
How many times has she saucily insinuated that all my affairs are the
secret of Polichinelle!”

This was true enough: I had not spared him on this point, nor perhaps
on any other that was assailable. Magnificent-minded, grand-hearted,
dear, faulty little man! You deserved candour, and from me always had
it.

Continuing my queries, I asked to whom the house belonged, who was my
landlord, the amount of my rent. He instantly gave me these particulars
in writing; he had foreseen and prepared all things.

The house was not M. Paul’s—that I guessed: he was hardly the man to
become a proprietor; I more than suspected in him a lamentable absence
of the saving faculty; he could get, but not keep; he needed a
treasurer. The tenement, then, belonged to a citizen in the
Basse-Ville—a man of substance, M. Paul said; he startled me by adding:
“a friend of yours, Miss Lucy, a person who has a most respectful
regard for you.” And, to my pleasant surprise, I found the landlord was
none other than M. Miret, the short-tempered and kind-hearted
bookseller, who had so kindly found me a seat that eventful night in
the park. It seems M. Miret was, in his station, rich, as well as much
respected, and possessed several houses in this faubourg; the rent was
moderate, scarce half of what it would have been for a house of equal
size nearer the centre of Villette.

“And then,” observed M. Paul, “should fortune not favour you, though I
think she will, I have the satisfaction to think you are in good hands;
M. Miret will not be extortionate: the first year’s rent you have
already in your savings; afterwards Miss Lucy must trust God, and
herself. But now, what will you do for pupils?”

“I must distribute my prospectuses.”

“Right! By way of losing no time, I gave one to M. Miret yesterday.
Should you object to beginning with three petite bourgeoises, the
Demoiselles Miret? They are at your service.”

“Monsieur, you forget nothing; you are wonderful. Object? It would
become me indeed to object! I suppose I hardly expect at the outset to
number aristocrats in my little day-school; I care not if they never
come. I shall be proud to receive M. Miret’s daughters.”

“Besides these,” pursued he, “another pupil offers, who will come daily
to take lessons in English; and as she is rich, she will pay
handsomely. I mean my god-daughter and ward, Justine Marie Sauveur.”

What is in a name?—what in three words? Till this moment I had listened
with living joy—I had answered with gleeful quickness; a name froze me;
three words struck me mute. The effect could not be hidden, and indeed
I scarce tried to hide it.

“What now?” said M. Paul.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Your countenance changes: your colour and your very eyes
fade. Nothing! You must be ill; you have some suffering; tell me what.”

I had nothing to tell.

He drew his chair nearer. He did not grow vexed, though I continued
silent and icy. He tried to win a word; he entreated with perseverance,
he waited with patience.

“Justine Marie is a good girl,” said he, “docile and amiable; not
quick—but you will like her.”

“I think not. I think she must not come here.”

Such was my speech.

“Do you wish to puzzle me? Do you know her? But, in truth, there is
something. Again you are pale as that statue. Rely on Paul Carlos; tell
him the grief.”

His chair touched mine; his hand, quietly advanced, turned me towards
him.

“Do you know Marie Justine?” said he again.

The name re-pronounced by his lips overcame me unaccountably. It did
not prostrate—no, it stirred me up, running with haste and heat through
my veins—recalling an hour of quick pain, many days and nights of
heart-sickness. Near me as he now sat, strongly and closely as he had
long twined his life in mine—far as had progressed, and near as was
achieved our minds’ and affections’ assimilation—the very suggestion of
interference, of heart-separation, could be heard only with a
fermenting excitement, an impetuous throe, a disdainful resolve, an
ire, a resistance of which no human eye or cheek could hide the flame,
nor any truth-accustomed human tongue curb the cry.

“I want to tell you something,” I said: “I want to tell you all.”

“Speak, Lucy; come near; speak. Who prizes you, if I do not? Who is
your friend, if not Emanuel? Speak!”

I spoke. All escaped from my lips. I lacked not words now; fast I
narrated; fluent I told my tale; it streamed on my tongue. I went back
to the night in the park; I mentioned the medicated draught—why it was
given—its goading effect—how it had torn rest from under my head,
shaken me from my couch, carried me abroad with the lure of a vivid yet
solemn fancy—a summer-night solitude on turf, under trees, near a deep,
cool lakelet. I told the scene realized; the crowd, the masques, the
music, the lamps, the splendours, the guns booming afar, the bells
sounding on high. All I had encountered I detailed, all I had
recognised, heard, and seen; how I had beheld and watched himself: how
I listened, how much heard, what conjectured; the whole history, in
brief, summoned to his confidence, rushed thither, truthful, literal,
ardent, bitter.

Still as I narrated, instead of checking, he incited me to proceed, he
spurred me by the gesture, the smile, the half-word. Before I had half
done, he held both my hands, he consulted my eyes with a most piercing
glance: there was something in his face which tended neither to calm
nor to put me down; he forgot his own doctrine, he forsook his own
system of repression when I most challenged its exercise. I think I
deserved strong reproof; but when have we our deserts? I merited
severity; he looked indulgence. To my very self I seemed imperious and
unreasonable, for I forbade Justine Marie my door and roof; he smiled,
betraying delight. Warm, jealous, and haughty, I knew not till now that
my nature had such a mood: he gathered me near his heart. I was full of
faults; he took them and me all home. For the moment of utmost mutiny,
he reserved the one deep spell of peace. These words caressed my ear:—

“Lucy, take my love. One day share my life. Be my dearest, first on
earth.”

We walked back to the Rue Fossette by moonlight—such moonlight as fell
on Eden—shining through the shades of the Great Garden, and haply
gilding a path glorious for a step divine—a Presence nameless. Once in
their lives some men and women go back to these first fresh days of our
great Sire and Mother—taste that grand morning’s dew—bathe in its
sunrise.

In the course of the walk I was told how Justine Marie Sauveur had
always been regarded with the affection proper to a daughter—how, with
M. Paul’s consent, she had been affianced for months to one Heinrich
Mühler, a wealthy young German merchant, and was to be married in the
course of a year. Some of M. Emanuel’s relations and connections would,
indeed, it seems, have liked him to marry her, with a view to securing
her fortune in the family; but to himself the scheme was repugnant, and
the idea totally inadmissible.

We reached Madame Beck’s door. Jean Baptiste’s clock tolled nine. At
this hour, in this house, eighteen months since, had this man at my
side bent before me, looked into my face and eyes, and arbitered my
destiny. This very evening he had again stooped, gazed, and decreed.
How different the look—how far otherwise the fate!

He deemed me born under his star: he seemed to have spread over me its
beam like a banner. Once—unknown, and unloved, I held him harsh and
strange; the low stature, the wiry make, the angles, the darkness, the
manner, displeased me. Now, penetrated with his influence, and living
by his affection, having his worth by intellect, and his goodness by
heart—I preferred him before all humanity.

We parted: he gave me his pledge, and then his farewell. We parted: the
next day—he sailed.