His good heart lived so completely in the present, he clung so firmly to a happiness which he believed to be fugitive, that Marguerite sometimes reproached herself for not generously holding out her hand and saying, "Let us at least be friends." Pierquin continued his suit with an obstinacy which is the unreflecting patience of fools.

He judged Marguerite by the ordinary rules of the multitude when judging of women.

He believed that the words marriage, freedom, fortune, which he had put into her mind, would geminate and flower into wishes by which he could profit; he imagined that her coldness was mere dissimulation.

But surround her as he would with gallant attentions, he could not hide the despotic ways of a man accustomed to manage the private affairs of many families with a high hand.

He discoursed to her in those platitudes of consolation common to his profession, which crawl like snails over the suffering mind, leaving behind them a trail of barren words which profane its sanctity.