"Oh! It is you, Camille," exclaimed Mme. de Lorcy. "You come apropos. Well?"
"Well! yes, madame, that is it," replied M. Langis; "and you see before you the most unhappy of men. Why is your pond dry? I want to fling myself into it head foremost."
Mme. de Lorcy laid down her embroidery, and crossed her arms. "So you have returned?" said she.
"Would to God I never had gone there! It is a land where poison is sold, and I have drunk of it."
"Don't abuse metaphors. You have seen her? What did you say to her?"
"Nothing, madame--nothing of what is in my heart. I made her believe that I had reflected, and changed my views; that I was entirely cured of my foolish passion for her; that I was simply making her a friendly visit. Yes, madame, I remained half a day with her, and during the half day I never once betrayed myself. I convinced her that the mask was a face. Tell me, conscientiously, have you ever read of a more heroic act in Plutarch's _Lives of Great Men_?"
"She was so enchanted, so delighted with the change, that she was dying to embrace me."
"She shall pay for it. And he, did you see him?"
"Just caught a glimpse of him, looked up to him as was befitting the humility of my position. This fortunate man, this glorious mortal, was enthroned on the top of the mail-coach."
"He has, I assure you, a certain look of deep profundity, and he bears his exploits inscribed on his brow. What am I, to contend against him! You must allow that I have the appearance of a school-boy. And yet, if I were to boast. This road in Transylvania for which I had the contract was by no means easy to construct. We had to cut through the solid rock, working in the air, suspended by ropes. This perilous labour so disheartened our workmen that some of them left us; to encourage the rest, I was slung up like them, and like them handled the pickaxe. One day, in the explosion of a charge a piece of stone struck the rope of one of my men with such violence that it cut it as clean in two as the edge of a razor would have done. The man fell--I believed him to be lost; by a miracle, his clothes caught in some brushwood, to which he succeeded in clinging. It was I who went to his assistance, and I swear to you that in this rescue I proved the strength of my muscles, and ran the risk twenty times of breaking my neck. The workmen had mistrusted me on account of my youth; from that day, I can assure you, they held me in respect."