Just as I was leaving my room to engage a box
the next morning, Pauline came to see me.
"'Perhaps your ten francs is not enough,' said the amiable,
kind-hearted girl; 'my mother told me to offer you this money. Take
it, please, take it!'
"She laid three crowns upon the table, and tried to escape, but I
would not let her go. Admiration dried the tears that sprang to my
eyes.
"'You are an angel, Pauline,' I said. 'It is not the loan that
touches me so much as the delicacy with which it is offered. I used to
wish for a rich wife, a fashionable woman of rank; and now, alas! I
would rather possess millions, and find some girl, as poor as you are,
with a generous nature like your own; and I would renounce a fatal
passion which will kill me. Perhaps what you told me will come true.'
"'That is enough,' she said, and fled away; the fresh trills of her
birdlike voice rang up the staircase.
"'She is very happy in not yet knowing love,' I said to myself,
thinking of the torments I had endured for many months past.
"Pauline's fifteen francs were invaluable to me. Foedora, thinking of
the stifling odor of the crowded place where we were to spend several
hours, was sorry that she had not brought a bouquet; I went in search
of flowers for her, as I had laid already my life and my fate at her
feet.
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