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, to find so many unexpected blessings—affection, devotion, riches, liberty, education, good precepts and good examples. But it is certain that, in order to pass from a given state to its opposite, though it be from evil to good, from grief to joy, from fatigue to repose, the soul of a man must suffer; in this hour of birth of a new destiny all the springs of his being are strained almost to breaking—even as at the approach of summer the sky is covered with dark clouds, and the earth, all a-tremble, seems about to be annihilated by the tempest.

At this moment my only thought was to devise some means of appeasing my hatred of M. de la Marche without betraying and without even arousing a suspicion of the mysterious bond which held Edmée in my power. Though nothing was less respected at Roche-Mauprat than the sanctity of an oath, yet the little reading I had had there—those ballads of chivalry of which I have already spoken—had filled me with an almost romantic love of good faith; and this was about the only virtue I had acquired there. My promise of secrecy to Edmée was therefore inviolable in my eyes.

"However," I said to myself, "I dare say I shall find some plausible pretext for throwing myself upon my enemy and strangling him."

To confess the truth, this was far from easy with a man who seemed bent on being all politeness and kindness.

Distracted by these thoughts, I forgot the dinner hour; and when I saw the sun sinking behind the turrets of the castle I realized too late that my absence must have been noticed, and that I could not appear without submitting to Edmée's searching questions, and to the abbé's cold, piercing gaze, which, though it always