beautiful night it was? How soft and perfumed was the air; how lovely the blue heavens and star-enameled sky! Ah, then, Madame, I was able for one instant to be alone with you. Then you were about to tell me all—the isolation of your life, the griefs of your heart. You leaned upon my arm—upon this, Madame! I felt, in bending my head toward you, your beautiful hair touch my cheek; and every time that it touched me I trembled from head to foot. Oh, Queen! Queen! You do not know what felicity from heaven, what joys from paradise, are comprised in a moment like that. Take my wealth, my fortune, my glory, all the days I have to live, for such an instant, for a night like that. For that night, Madame, that night you loved me, I will swear it.”
“My Lord, yes; it is possible that the influence of the place, the charm of the beautiful evening, the fascination of your look—the thousand circumstances, in short, which sometimes unite to destroy a woman—were grouped around me on that fatal evening; but, my Lord, you saw the queen come to the aid of the woman who faltered. At the first word you dared to utter, at