"This last consideration so pressed on me that, when Louvier called on me, I think that day or the nests I gave him Louise's note, and told him that, if he were still as much in love with her as ever, les absents ont toujours tort, and he had better go to Aix-la-Chapelle and find her out; that he had my hearty approval of his wooing, and consent to his marriage, though I still urged the wisdom and fairness, if she would take the preliminary stepwhich, after all, the French law frees as much as possible from pain and scandalof annulling the irregular marriage into which her childlike youth had been decoyed.