“‘Bah! why should you?’ she said petulantly. Her hand shook in mine with the throbbing of her pulse; she snatched it away, and looked at both of mine.
“‘You will marry a rich wife,’ she said, ‘but she will give you a great deal of trouble. Ah, Dieu! she will be your death,—I am sure of it.’
“In her exclamation there was something like belief in her mother’s absurd superstitions.
“‘You are very credulous, Pauline!’
“‘The woman whom you will love is going to kill you—there is no doubt of it,’ she said, looking at me with alarm.
“She took up her brush again and dipped it in the color; her great agitation was evident; she looked at me no longer. I was ready to give credence just then to superstitious fancies; no man is utterly wretched so long as he is superstitious; a belief of that kind is often in reality a hope.
“I found that those two magnificent five-franc pieces were lying, in fact, upon my table when I reached my room. During the first confused thoughts of early slumber, I tried to audit my accounts so as to explain this unhoped-for windfall; but I lost myself in useless calculations, and slept. Just as I was leaving my room to engage a box the next morning, Pauline came to see me.
“‘Perhaps your ten francs is not enough,’ said the amiable, kind-hearted girl; ‘my mother told me to offer you this money. Take it, please, take it!’
“She laid three crowns upon the table, and tried to escape, but I would not let her go. Admiration dried the tears that sprang to my eyes.
“‘You are an angel, Pauline,’ I said. ‘It is not the loan that touches me so much as the delicacy with which it is offered. I used to wish for a rich wife, a fashionable woman of rank; and now, alas! I would rather possess millions, and find some girl, as poor as you are, with a generous nature like your own; and I would renounce a fatal passion which will kill me. Perhaps what you told me will come true.’