Say that I am ugly, brutish; I did
not make myself so, any more than I made
myself love her. It is my fate. But am I
to submit to the consequences of my fate
without a struggle? Not I. As strong as
my love is, so strong is my will. It can be
no stronger,' continued he, gloomily. 'Aunt
Babette, you must help me—you must make
her love me.' He was so fierce here, that
Pierre said he did not wonder that his mother
was frightened.

"'I, Victor!' she exclaimed. 'I make her
love you! How can I? Ask me to speak
for you to Mademoiselle Didot, or to
Mademoiselle Cauchois even, or to such as they,
and I'll do it, and welcome. But to
Mademoiselle de Créquy, why you don't know the
difference! Those people—the old nobility,
I mean—why they don't know a man from a
dog, out of their own rank! And no wonder,
for the young gentlemen of quality are treated
differently to us from their very birth. If
she had you to-morrow, you would be miserable.
Let me alone for knowing the
aristocracy. I have not been a concierge to a
duke and three counts for nothing. I tell
you, all your ways are different to her ways.'

"'I would change my ways, as you call
them.'

"'Be reasonable, Victor.'

"'No, I will not be reasonable, if by that
you mean giving her up. I tell you two
lives are before me; one with her, one without
her. But the latter will be but a short
career for both of us. You said, aunt, that
the talk went in the conciergerie of her
father's hotel, that she would have nothing
to do with this cousin whom I put out of the
way to-day?'

"'So the servants said. How could I
know? All I know is, that he left off coming
to our hotel, and that at one time before then
he had never been two days absent.'

"'So much the better for him. He suffers
now for having come between me and my
object—in trying to take her away out of
my sight. Take you warning, Pierre! I
did not like your meddling to–night.' And
so he went off, leaving Madame Babette
rocking herself backwards and forwards, in
all the depression of spirits consequent upon
the reaction after the brandy, and upon her
knowledge of her nephew's threatened
purpose combined.

"'In telling you most of this, I have simply
repeated Pierre's account, which I wrote
down at the time. But here what he had to
say came to a sudden break; for the next
morning, when Madame Babette rose, Virginie
was missing, and it was some time before
either she, or Pierre, or Morin, could get the
slightest clue to the missing girl.

"And now I must take up the story as it
was told to the Intendant Fléchier by the
old gardener Jacques, with whom Clément
had been lodging on his first arrival in Paris.
The old man could not, I dare say, remember
half as much of what had happened as Pierre
did; the former had the dulled memory of age,
while Pierre had evidently thought over the
whole series of events as a story—as a play,
if one may call it so—during the solitary
hours in his after-life, wherever they were
passed, whether in lonely camp watches, or
in the foreign prison where he had to drag
out many years. Clément had, as I said,
returned to the gardener's garret after he
had been dismissed from the Hôtel Duguesclin.
There were several reasons for his
thus doubling back. One was, that he put
nearly the whole breadth of Paris between
him and an enemy; though why Morin was
an enemy; and to what extent he carried his
dislike or hatred, Clément could not tell of
course. The next reason for returning to
Jacques was, no doubt, the conviction that,
in multiplying his residences, he multiplied
the chances against his being suspected and
recognised. And then, again, the old man
was in his secret, and his ally, although
perhaps but a feeble kind of one. It was through
Jacques that the plan of communication, by
means of a nosegay of pinks, had been
devised; and it was Jacques who procured him
the last disguise that Clement was to use in
Paris—as he hoped and trusted. It was that
of a respectable shopkeeper of no particular
class; a dress that would have seemed
perfectly suitable to the young man who would
naturally have worn it; and yet, as Clément
put it on, and adjusted it—giving it a sort of
finish and elegance which I always noticed
about his appearance, and which I believed
was innate in the wearer—I have no doubt it
seemed like the usual apparel of a gentleman.
No coarseness of texture, nor clumsiness of
cut, could disguise the nobleman of thirty
descents, it appeared; for immediately on
arriving at the place of rendezvous, he was
recognised by the men placed there on
Morin's information to seize him. Jaques,
following at a little distance, with a bundle
under his arm containing articles of feminine
disguise for Virginie, saw four men attempt
Clément's arrest—saw him, quick as lightning,
draw a sword hitherto concealed in a clumsy
stick—saw his agile figure spring to his guard,
—and saw him defend himself with the
rapidity and art of a man skilled in
arms. But what good did it do? as Jacques
piteously used to ask, Monsieur Féchier
told me. A great blow from a heavy club on
the sword–arm of Monsieur de Céquy laid
it helpless and iinmoveable by his side,
Jacques always thought that that blow came
from one of the spectators, who by this time
had collected round the scene of the affray,
The next instant, his master,— his little
marquis—was down among the feet of
the crowd, and though he was up again
before he had received much damage—so
active and light was my poor Clément—it
was not before the old gardener had hobbled
forwards, and, with many an old-fashioned