"Oh, yes! that is very satisfactory," said Edouard.
"Very satisfactory--yes! But it is coupled with one little condition, and that is, my dear friend, that you will not come without me to see this charming child."
Edouard was no longer so well pleased at Alfred's project; but Isaure looked at him as if she feared that he would refuse, and he answered with a sigh:
"Well, yes, I agree; we will come together."
"Good!" said Alfred; "that is a resolution worthy of our chivalrous ancestors. But I am inclined to think that it's time for us to say adieu to the lady of our thoughts for to-day.--Come, Edouard, let us return to the château.--Au revoir, my sweet child; we shall see you again to-morrow, but I trust that those lovely eyes will shed no more tears."
Isaure bestowed a gentle smile on the two young men as they left her abode and returned to their horses.
"Ha! ha!" said Alfred; "you followed my example, and took a horse. Faith, we are equally well mounted. It is agreed that everything is common between us, until the little one has made her choice, and that cannot be long. It would be a deuced strange thing, agreeable and comely as we both are, if one of us should not succeed in pleasing a peasant girl, after making so many conquests at Paris!"
Edouard did not share Alfred's merriment; he did not treat so lightly as his friend the sentiment that he felt for Isaure.
"My friend," said he, "I am really sorry that you are thinking of that girl."
"What's that? Why so? You are thinking of her yourself."
"But I am thinking of her in rather a different way."
"Oh! my dear Edouard, you can't make me believe that you have formed a plan of marrying this little goatherd! You would like perhaps to have me suppose so, so that then,--respecting so pure and spotless a love, I would not go again to talk nonsense to the girl. That would be very clever!"
"Alfred, you judge your friend very ill!"
"I know that friends cease to be friends as soon as love comes in between them. However, because you pretend to love this girl seriously, why should you not believe that I may love her too?"
"Look you, Alfred, a very bright woman said to me not long ago, at Paris: 'There's a vast difference between _desire_ and love'; you desire to possess Isaure, but you do not really love her."
