bitterness from her regrets.  Picture my death to her, not as the expiation of the innocent whim of her youth, but as that of a happiness too great to go unchecked.  Tell her that there are great joys as well as great sorrows, and that when they have outweighed the human measure of happiness, the heart which holds them must break and grow still.  Tell her, ah! above all, tell her that I have dearly loved her, and if I carry her whole life away with me, I leave her mine in exchange.  Finally, madame, tell her that I died blessing her, regretting that I had but one life to lay down as the price of her love.

While I write, I see her at her window, smiling, radiant, beautiful, beaming with happiness, resplendent with life and youth.

Farewell, madame; an eternal farewell!

RAYMOND DE VILLIERS.

XXXV.

EDGAR DE MEILHAN to the PRINCE DE MONBERT,
Poste-Restante (Rouen).

Paris, August 12th 18—.

What I wrote you yesterday was very infamous and incredible.  You think that is all; well, no! you have only half of the story.  My hand trembles with rage so that I can scarcely hold my pen.  What remains to be told is the acme of perfidy; a double-dyed treason; we have been made game of, you as a plighted husband, I as a lover.  All this seems as incoherent to you as a dream.  What can I have in common with Irene whom I have never seen?  Wait, you shall see!

My faithful Joseph discovered that the marriage was to take place at the
Church of the Madeleine, at six o’clock in the morning.

I was so agitated, so restless, so tormented by gloomy presentiments that I did not go to bed.  At the given hour I went out wrapped in my cloak.  Although it is summer-time I was cold; a slight feverish chill ran through me.  The catastrophe to come had already turned me pale.

The Madeleine stood out faintly against the gray morning sky.  The livid figures of some revellers, surprised by the day, were seen here and there on the street corners.  The stir of the great city had not yet begun.  I thought I had arrived too soon, but a carriage with neither crest nor cipher, in charge of a servant in quiet livery, was stationed in one of the cross-streets that run by the church.

I ascended the steps with uncertain footing, and soon saw, in one of those spurious chapels, which have been stuck with so much trouble in that counterfeit Greek temple, wax lights and the motions of the priest who officiated.

The bride, enveloped in her veil, prostrated before the altar, seemed to be praying fervently; the husband, as if he were not the most contemptible of men, stood erect and proud, his face beaming with joy.  The ceremony drew to a close, Irene raised her head, but I was so placed as not to be able to distinguish her features.