felt the earthly woman die within her, and the true woman, the noble and angelic being, veiled until now by flesh, arose in her place.  Her great mind, her knowledge, her attainments, her false loves had brought her face to face with what?  Ah! who would have thought it? —­with the bounteous mother, the comforter of troubled spirits, with the Roman Church, ever kind to repentance, poetic to poets, childlike with children, and yet so profound, so full of mystery to anxious, restless minds that they can burrow there and satisfy all longings, all questionings, all hopes.  She cast her eyes, as it were, upon the strangely devious way—­like the tortuous rocky path before her—­over which her love for Calyste had led her.  Ah!  Calyste was indeed a messenger from heaven, her divine conductor!  She had stifled earthly love, and a divine love had come from it.

After walking for some distance in silence, Calyste could not refrain, on a remark of Beatrix about the grandeur of the ocean, so unlike the smiling beauty of the Mediterranean, from comparing in depth, purity, extent, unchanging and eternal duration, that ocean with his love.

“It is met by a rock!” said Beatrix, laughing.

“When you speak thus,” he answered, with a sublime look, “I hear you, I see you, and I can summon to my aid the patience of the angels; but when I am alone, you would pity me if you could see me then.  My mother weeps for my suffering.”

“Listen to me, Calyste; we must put an end to all this,” said the marquise, gazing down upon the sandy road.  “Perhaps we have now reached the only propitious place to say these things, for never in my life did I see nature more in keeping with my thoughts.  I have seen Italy, where all things tell of love; I have seen Switzerland, where all is cool and fresh, and tells of happiness,—­the happiness of labor; where the verdure, the tranquil waters, the smiling slopes, are oppressed by the snow-topped Alps; but I have never seen anything that so depicts the burning barrenness of my life as that little arid plain down there, dried by the salt sea winds, corroded by the spray, where a fruitless agriculture tries to struggle against the will of that great ocean.  There, Calyste, you have an image of this Beatrix.  Don’t cling to it.  I love you, but I will never be yours in any way whatever, for I have the sense of my inward desolation.  Ah! you do not know how cruel I am to myself in speaking thus to you.  No, you shall never see your idol diminished; she shall never fall from the height at which you have placed her.  I now have a horror of any love which disregards the world and religion.  I shall remain in my present bonds; I shall be that sandy plain we see before us, without fruit or flowers or verdure.”

“But if you are abandoned?” said Calyste.

“Then I should beg my pardon of the man I have offended.  I will never run the risk of taking a happiness I know would quickly end.”