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78 always told it was to be spent for books. My hopes were therefore very slight; but this increased rather than diminished the eagerness of my desire."

"Don't I know you, my poor Claude?" I interrupted, "I never heard the story of the sabre, but I once saw you desperately in love (I can't use any other term) with the horrible little diadem of some madonna blazing with mock jewels in the shop of a vendor of church furniture. You longed to crown Aline Verrier with it—that pretty, fair-haired Aline, who used to play spillikins with us at your sister's when I went there to lunch."

"Was it as horrible as all that?" he cried, shaking his head. "I see it even now, quite as beautiful as that diadem of Queen Constance which they show us in the treasury at Palermo. However, as you have not forgotten the fury of my fancies, you will the better understand the moral drama which was enacted within my soul on that Christmas evening, now twenty years ago. My sister Blanche was ill, as usual; her headache had been so severe during the day that she was forced to go to bed. My brother-in-law, foreseeing the approaching catastrophe, did not leave her bedside, and they both consented that I should go and dine with my uncle. She did not understand, my poor dear sister, that her sick-room, so warm and quiet, was