"You love a man, he knows it, and he is stopped by obstacles ?" "I am poor," answered Mademoiselle d'Arlange, "and his family is immensely rich.

His father is cruel, inexorable." "His father," cried the magistrate, with a bitterness he did not dream of hiding, "his father, his family, and that withholds him! You are poor, he is rich, and that stops him! And yet he knows you love him! Ah! why am I not in his place?
and why have I not the entire universe against me?
What sacrifice can compare with love?
such as I understand it.

Nay, would it be a sacrifice?
That which appears most so, is it not really an immense joy?
To suffer, to struggle, to wait, to hope always, to devote oneself entirely to another; that is my idea of love." "It is thus I love," said Claire with simplicity.
This answer crushed the magistrate.

He could understand it.

He knew that for him there was no hope; but he felt a terrible enjoyment in torturing himself, and proving his misfortune by intense suffering.
"But," insisted he, "how have you known him, spoken to him?
Where?
When?
Madame d'Arlange receives no one." "I ought now to tell you everything, sir," answered Claire proudly.
"I have known him for a long time.