One morning the Marquis, writing at the large table in the library, while Caroline at the other end was turning over some maps, laid down his pen and said to her with emotion,—  
"Mlle de Saint-Geneix, I remember that you have sometimes expressed a good-natured wish to know about this work of mine, and I thought I could never make up my mind to satisfy you; but now,—yes, now, I feel that submitting it to you will give me pleasure. This book is your work much more than it is mine, after all; because I did not believe in it, and you have led me to respect the impulse which prompted it. By restoring my faith in my task, you have enabled me to carry it further in one month than I had done for ten years before. You are also the cause why I shall certainly finish a thing which I should, perhaps, have been always recommencing until my last hour. Besides, it was near at hand, this last hour! I felt it coming quickly, and I hastened, the prey of despair, for I could see nothing advancing but the close of my life. You ordered me to live, and I have lived; to be calm, and I am at peace; to believe in God, and in myself, and I do so believe. Since I now have faith in my thought you must also give me faith in my power to express it, for although I do not hold to style more than is reasonable, yet I consider it necessary to give weight and attractiveness to truth. Here, my friend, read!"
 
"Yes," replied Caroline, eagerly; "you see that I do not hesitate, that I do not refuse; and this is neither prudent nor modest on my part. Very well, I am not disturbed by that! I am so sure of your talent, that I stand in no fear of the fact that I shall have to be sincere, and I believe so thoroughly in the harmony of our opinions, that I even flatter myself I shall comprehend what, under other circumstances, would be beyond my reach."
 
But, as she was about to take the manuscript, Caroline hesitated before accepting so especial a mark of confidence, and inquired whether the excellent Duke was not also to be a sharer in this gratification.
 
"No," replied the Marquis, "my brother will not come to-day. I have seized upon a time when he is away hunting. I do not wish him to know about my work before it is finished; he would not comprehend it. His hereditary prejudices would stand in the way. To be sure he thinks he has a few 'advanced ideas' as he calls them, and he knows that I go farther than he; but he does not suspect how far I have strayed from the road in which my education placed me. My rebellion against these things of the past would put him in consternation, and this might disturb me before the close of my work. But you yourself,—perhaps you are going to be a little uneasy?"
 
"I have reached no decision myself," replied Caroline, "and very probably I shall adopt your opinions when I understand them exactly. Sit down now; I will read aloud for your benefit as well as my own. I want you to hear yourself speak. I think this must be a good way of rereading one's work."
 
Caroline read that morning a half-volume, resuming the employment the next day and the day after. In three days, she had made the Marquis listen to a summary of his studies for many years. She followed his handwriting as easily as print, although it was somewhat blind; and as she read aloud with admirable clearness, intelligence, and simplicity, growing animated and conscious of her own emotion when the narration rose to the lyric passages in the epic construction of the history, the author felt himself enlightened at once by a very sun of certainty formed of all the scattered rays by which his meditations had been penetrated.
 
The picture was fine, of beautiful originality, bearing the stamp of real greatness. Under the simple and mysterious heading, "The History of Titles," he raised a whole series of bold questions, which aimed at nothing less than rendering universal, without restrictions and forever, the thought of the revolutionary night, August 4, 1789. This son of a noble house with ancient privileges, brought up in the pride of family and in the disdain of commoners, introduced before our modern civilization a written accusation of the nobility, along with documents to sustain his case, the proofs of their usurpations, their outrages, or their crimes, and pronounced sentence of forfeiture against them in the name of logic and justice, in the name of the human conscience, and, more than all, in the name of simple, scriptural Christianity. He boldly attacked the compromise of eighteen centuries, which would ally the equality revealed by the apostles to the arrangements of civil and theocratical hierarchies. Admitting in all classes none but political and executive hierarchies, that is to say, official positions, held as proofs of personal courage and social activity, or in a word, of any real services rendered, he pursued the privilege of birth as far as into the present state of public opinion and even as far as its final influences; tracing with a firm hand the history of the spoliations and usurpations of power from the creation of the feudal nobility down to the present time. It was reconstructing the history of France from a special point of view, under the sway of one idea,—a distinct, absolute, inflexible, indignant idea, springing from that religious feeling, which aristocracy cannot attack, without itself committing suicide, invoking, as it does, the divine right for the support of its own institution.
 
We will say no more about the data of this book, even a criticism of which would be foreign to our subject. Whatever judgment might be passed on the convictions of the author, it was impossible not to recognize in him a splendid talent, joined to the knowledge and strong good faith which mark a mind of the first rank. His style especially was magnificent, of a copiousness and richness which the modest brevity of the Marquis in social life would never have led one to suspect; though, even in his book, he gave small space to discussions. After having stated his premises and the motives of his investigation in a few pages of warm and severe criticism, he passed on with eloquent clearness to the facts themselves and classified them historically. His narrations, teeming as they did with color, had the interest of a drama or a romance, even when, rummaging among obscure family archives, he revealed the horrors of feudal times, with the sufferings and degradation of the lower classes. An enthusiast, but making no apologies for the fact, he deeply felt all offences against justice, against modesty, against love, and in many pages his soul, in its passion for truth, justice, and beauty, would reveal itself entirely in bursts of excited eloquence. More than once Caroline felt the tears come to her eyes, and laid aside the book to recover her composure.
 
Caroline made no objections. It is not for the simple narrator to say that she should have made them or that there were really none to make; it is necessary to relate merely that she found no objections to offer; so great was her admiration of his ability and her esteem for the man himself. The Marquis de Villemer became in her eyes a person so completely superior to all she had ever met, that she then and there formed the purpose of devoting herself to him unreservedly and for her whole life.
 
When we say "unreservedly" we are mindful that there was very certainly one exception which would not have been agreed to thus, had it presented itself to her mind; but it did not present itself. In such a man there was nothing to disturb the serenity of her enthusiasm. And yet we should not dare to affirm that, from this time onward, her enthusiasm did not unconsciously include love as one of the elements indispensable to its fulness; but love had not been its point of departure. The Marquis had never until now revealed all the attractiveness of his intellect or of his person; he had been constrained, agitated, and out of health. Caroline did not, at first, perceive the change in him, that was taking place in such a gradual way, for he grew eloquent, young, and handsome, day by day, and hour by hour; recovering his health, his confidence in himself, the certainty of his own power, and the charm happiness gives to a noble face which has been veiled by doubt.
 
When she began to account for all these delightful transformations, she had already felt their effects without her own knowledge, and the autumn had come. They were about returning to Paris, and Madame de Villemer, under the sway of a fixed idea, would say every day to her young companion, "In three weeks, in a fortnight, in a week, the 'famous' interview of my son with Mlle de Xaintrailles will take place."
 
Caroline then felt a fearful anguish in the depths of her heart, a consternation, a terror, and an overmastering revelation of a kind of attachment which she did not yet confess even to herself. She had so fully accepted the vague and still distant prospect of this marriage that she had never been willing to ask herself whether it would give her pain. It was for her a thing inevitable, like old age or death; but one does not really accept, old age or death until either arrives, and Caroline felt that she was growing weak and that she should die at the thought of this absolute separation, so near at hand.
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