fate to Paris, I was obliged to live the life of Paris, passing from misery to luxury, exposed to dangers and temptations. My calumniators did not succeed in making me immoral. God loved me, since He gave me children. The justice of God is greater towards poor weak mortals than the justice of men. I do not fear Him, for I know there are mothers of families who will not be better received than I shall be at the Mercy Seat. If the writers of scandalous memoirs should seek one day to parody my life, tell it in all its simplicity. You know well I was not educated at the Sacré Cœur, and those who are, are not many of them better than I am, for I have only sinned against myself, while many of those young ladies only passed through the sacrament of marriage to betray it.'
"We were walking in the park; the dinner-bell rang. 'I think I have suddenly become very serious,' she said. 'I must not do so again, for I wish the evening to pass gaily.' Rachel was charming the whole time of dinner, but afterwards nearly fainted away with fatigue. She then talked of the possibility of her marriage with the man she loved."
Houssaye tells us, however, that, at the bottom of her heart, she knew this to be but a dream, one of those phantoms she had pursued all her life; the state of her health alone precluding the possibility of such a thing. She wrote, indeed, about this time to Jules Lecomte:—
