Ah! how passionately he loved her--how could he live without her?
Yet he feared--he was almost forced to believe--that he had lost her irreparably, and that for him hope was dead.

Those were terrible days for the poor, grief-stricken young baron, and he felt that he could not long endure such misery and live.

Two or three months passed away thus, and one day when de Sigognac chanced to be in his own room, finishing a sonnet addressed to Isabelle, Pierre entered, and announced to his master that there was a gentleman without who wished to speak with him.
"A gentleman, who wants to see me!" exclaimed the astonished baron.

"You must be either romancing or mad, my good Pierre! There is no gentleman in the world who can have anything to say to me.

However, for the rarity of the thing, you may bring in this extraordinary mortal--if such there really be, and you are not dreaming, as I shrewdly suspect.