Talk ripened into conversation, and conversation into interest. The heart of Marie—always dutiful at home—now went wandering under the guide of her mind. She admired the distinguished traveler, and from admiring, she came presently—in virtue of his kind offices and of his instructions continued day after day—to love him.
Therefore it was that Jacques Arago, when he came to depart upon new voyages (and here we follow his own story, rather than probability), did not whisper of his leave to the beautiful Marie, who still held her place in the baker's shop upon the Boulevard Beaumarchais.
But she found her liking too strong to resist; and when she heard of his departure, she hurried away to Havre—only to see the sails of his out-bound ship glimmering on the horizon.
She bore the matter stoutly as she could—cherishing his letters each one as so many parts of the mind that had enslaved her; and, finally, years after, met him calmly, on his return. "I have lived," she said, "to see you again."
But in a little while, Arago, sitting one day in his bureau, receives a letter from Marie of Beaumarchais.
"You deceived me when you went away over the sea; I forgive you for it! Will you forgive me now another deception? I was not well when you saw me last; I am now in the Hospital Beaujon; I shall die before tomorrow. But I die faithful to my religion—God—you! Adieu!
Marie."
Jacques Arago himself writes so much of the story as has served to make the back-bone for this; and we appeal to the ninety thousand readers of our gossip if Jacques Arago needed any thing more than the finesse of Lamartine, and a touch of his poetic nature, to weave the story of poor Marie into another Raphael?