Next evening Valerie armed herself for conquest by making such a toilet as a Frenchwoman can devise when she wishes to make the most of herself. She studied her appearance in this great work as a man going out to fight a duel practises his feints and lunges. Not a speck, not a wrinkle was to be seen. Valerie was at her whitest, her softest, her sweetest. And certain little "patches" attracted the eye.

It is commonly supposed that the patch of the eighteenth century is out of date or out of fashion; that is a mistake. In these days women, more ingenious perhaps than of yore, invite a glance through the opera-glass by other audacious devices. One is the first to hit on a rosette in her hair with a diamond in the centre, and she attracts every eye for a whole evening; another revives the hair-net, or sticks a dagger through the twist to suggest a garter; this one wears velvet bands round her wrists, that one appears in lace lippets. These valiant efforts, an Austerlitz of vanity or of love, then set the fashion for lower spheres by the time the inventive creatress has originated something new. This evening, which Valerie meant to be a success for her, she had placed three patches. She had washed her hair with some lye, which changed its hue for a few days from a gold color to a duller shade. Madame Steinbock's was almost red, and she would be in every point unlike her. This new effect gave her a piquant and strange appearance, which puzzled her followers so much, that Montes asked her:

"What have you done to yourself this evening?"—Then she put on a rather wide black velvet neck-ribbon, which showed off the whiteness of her skin. One patch took the place of the assassine of our grandmothers. And Valerie pinned the sweetest rosebud into her bodice, just in the middle above the stay-busk, and in the daintiest little hollow! It was enough to make every man under thirty drop his eyelids.

"I am as sweet as a sugar-plum," said she to herself, going through her attitudes before the glass, exactly as a dancer practises her curtesies.

Lisbeth had been to market, and the dinner was to be one of those superfine meals which Mathurine had been wont to cook for her Bishop when he entertained the prelate of the adjoining diocese.

Stidmann, Claude Vignon, and Count Steinbock arrived almost together, just at six. An ordinary, or, if you will, a natural woman would have hastened at the announcement of a name so eagerly longed for; but Valerie, though ready since five o'clock, remained in her room, leaving her three guests together, certain that she was the subject of their conversation or of their secret thoughts. She herself had arranged the drawing-room, laying out the pretty trifles produced in Paris and nowhere else, which reveal the woman and announce her presence: albums bound in enamel or embroidered with beads, saucers full of pretty rings, marvels of Sevres or Dresden mounted exquisitely by Florent and Chanor, statues, books, all the frivolities which cost insane sums, and which passion orders of the makers in its first delirium—or to patch up its last quarrel.

Besides, Valerie was in the state of intoxication that comes of triumph. She had promised to marry Crevel if Marneffe should die; and the amorous Crevel had transferred to the name of Valerie Fortin bonds bearing ten thousand francs a year, the sum-total of what he had made in railway speculations during the past three years, the returns on the capital of a hundred thousand crowns which he had at first offered to the Baronne Hulot. So Valerie now had an income of thirty-two thousand francs.

Crevel had just committed himself to a promise of far greater magnitude than this gift of his surplus. In the paroxysm of rapture which his Duchess had given him from two to four—he gave this fine title to Madame de Marneffe to complete the illusion—for Valerie had surpassed herself in the Rue du Dauphin that afternoon, he had thought well to encourage her in her promised fidelity by giving her the prospect of a certain little mansion, built in the Rue Barbette by an imprudent contractor, who now wanted to sell it. Valerie could already see herself in this delightful residence, with a fore-court and a garden, and keeping a carriage!

"What respectable life can ever procure so much in so short a time, or so easily?" said she to Lisbeth as she finished dressing. Lisbeth was to dine with Valerie that evening, to tell Steinbock those things about the lady which nobody can say about herself.

Madame Marneffe, radiant with satisfaction, came into the drawing-room with modest grace, followed by Lisbeth dressed in black and yellow to set her off.

"Good-evening, Claude," said she, giving her hand to the famous old critic.

Claude Vignon, like many another, had become a political personage—a word describing an ambitious man at the first stage of his career. The political personage of 1840 represents, in some degree, the Abbe of the eighteenth century. No drawing-room circle is complete without one.

"My dear, this is my cousin, Count Steinbock," said Lisbeth, introducing Wenceslas, whom Valerie seemed to have overlooked.

"Oh yes, I recognized Monsieur le Comte," replied Valerie with a gracious bow to the artist. "I often saw you in the Rue du Doyenne, and I had the pleasure of being present at your wedding.—It would be difficult, my dear," said she to Lisbeth, "to forget your adopted son after once seeing him.—It is most kind of you, Monsieur Stidmann," she went on, "to have accepted my invitation at such short notice; but necessity knows no law. I knew you to be the friend of both these gentlemen. Nothing is more dreary, more sulky, than a dinner where all the guests are strangers, so it was for their sake that I hailed you in—but you will come another time for mine, I hope?—Say that you will."

And for a few minutes she moved about the room with Stidmann, wholly occupied with him.

Crevel and Hulot were announced separately, and then a deputy named Beauvisage.

This individual, a provincial Crevel, one of the men created to make up the crowd in the world, voted under the banner of Giraud, a State Councillor, and Victorin Hulot. These two politicians were trying to form a nucleus of progressives in the loose array of the Conservative Party. Giraud himself occasionally spent the evening at Madame Marneffe's, and she flattered herself that she should also capture Victorin Hulot; but the puritanical lawyer had hitherto found excuses for refusing to accompany his father and father-in-law. It seemed to him criminal to be seen in the house of the woman who cost his mother so many tears. Victorin Hulot was to the puritans of political life what a pious woman is among bigots.

Beauvisage, formerly a stocking manufacturer at Arcis, was anxious to pick up the Paris style. This man, one of the outer stones of the Chamber, was forming himself under the auspices of this delicious and fascinating Madame Marneffe. Introduced here by Crevel, he had accepted him, at her instigation, as his model and master. He consulted him on every point, took the address of his tailor, imitated him, and tried to strike the same attitudes. In short, Crevel was his Great Man.

Valerie, surrounded by these bigwigs and the three artists, and supported by Lisbeth, struck Wenceslas as a really superior woman, all the more so because Claude Vignon spoke of her like a man in love.

"She is Madame de Maintenon in Ninon's petticoats!" said the veteran critic. "You may please her in an evening if you have the wit; but as for making her love you—that would be a triumph to crown a man's ambition and fill up his life."

Valerie, while seeming cold and heedless of her former neighbor, piqued his vanity, quite unconsciously indeed, for she knew nothing of the Polish character. There is in the Slav a childish element, as there is in all these primitively wild nations which have overflowed into civilization rather than that they have become civilized. The race has spread like an inundation, and has covered a large portion of the globe. It inhabits deserts whose extent is so vast that it expands at its ease; there is no jostling there, as there is in Europe, and civilization is impossible without the constant friction of minds and interests. The Ukraine, Russia, the plains by the Danube, in short, the Slav nations, are a connecting link between Europe and Asia, between civilization and barbarism. Thus the Pole, the wealthiest member of the Slav family, has in his character all the childishness and inconsistency of a beardless race. He has courage, spirit, and strength; but, cursed with instability, that courage, strength, and energy have neither method nor guidance; for the Pole displays a variability resembling that of the winds which blow across that vast plain broken with swamps; and though he has the impetuosity of the snow squalls that wrench and sweep away buildings, like those aerial avalanches he is lost in the first pool and melts into water. Man always assimilates something from the surroundings in which he lives. Perpetually at strife with the Turk, the Pole has imbibed a taste for Oriental splendor; he often sacrifices what is needful for the sake of display. The men dress themselves out like women, yet the climate has given them the tough constitution of Arabs.

The Pole, sublime in suffering, has tired his oppressors' arms by sheer endurance of beating; and, in the nineteenth century, has reproduced the spectacle presented by the early Christians. Infuse only ten per cent of English cautiousness into the frank and open Polish nature, and the magnanimous white eagle would at this day be supreme wherever the two-headed eagle has sneaked in. A little Machiavelism would have hindered Poland from helping to save Austria, who has taken a share of it; from borrowing from Prussia, the usurer who had undermined it; and from breaking up as soon as a division was first made.

At the christening of Poland, no doubt, the Fairy Carabosse, overlooked by the genii who endowed that attractive people with the most brilliant gifts, came in to say:

"Keep all the gifts that my sisters have bestowed on you; but you shall never know what you wish for!"

If, in its heroic duel with Russia, Poland had won the day, the Poles would now be fighting among themselves, as they formerly fought in their Diets to hinder each other from being chosen King. When that nation, composed entirely of hot-headed dare-devils, has good sense enough to seek a Louis XI. among her own offspring, to accept his despotism and a dynasty, she will be saved.

What Poland has been politically, almost every Pole is in private life, especially under the stress of disaster. Thus Wenceslas Steinbock, after worshiping his wife for three years and knowing that he was a god to her, was so much nettled at finding himself barely noticed by Madame Marneffe, that he made it a point of honor to attract her attention. He compared Valerie with his wife and gave her the palm. Hortense was beautiful flesh, as Valerie had said to Lisbeth; but Madame Marneffe had spirit in her very shape, and the savor of vice.

Such devotion as Hortense's is a feeling which a husband takes as his due; the sense of the immense preciousness of such perfect love soon wears off, as a debtor, in the course of time, begins to fancy that the borrowed money is his own. This noble loyalty becomes the daily bread of the soul, and an infidelity is as tempting as a dainty. The woman who is scornful, and yet more the woman who is reputed dangerous, excites curiosity, as spices add flavor to good food. Indeed, the disdain so cleverly acted by Valerie was a novelty to Wenceslas, after three years of too easy enjoyment. Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress.

Many men desire to have two editions of the same work, though it is in fact a proof of inferiority when a man cannot make his mistress of his wife. Variety in this particular is a sign of weakness. Constancy will always be the real genius of love, the evidence of immense power—the power that makes the poet! A man ought to find every woman in his wife, as the squalid poets of the seventeenth century made their Manons figure as Iris and Chloe.

"Well," said Lisbeth to the Pole, as she beheld him fascinated, "what do you think of Valerie?"

"She is too charming," replied Wenceslas.

"You would not listen to me," said Betty. "Oh! my little Wenceslas, if you and I had never parted, you would have been that siren's lover; you might have married her when she was a widow, and you would have had her forty thousand francs a year——"

"Really?"

"Certainly," replied Lisbeth. "Now, take care of yourself; I warned you of the danger; do not singe your wings in the candle!—Come, give me your arm, dinner is served."

No language could be so thoroughly demoralizing as this; for if you show a Pole a precipice, he is bound to leap it. As a nation they have the very spirit of cavalry; they fancy they can ride down every obstacle and come out victorious. The spur applied by Lisbeth to Steinbock's vanity was intensified by the appearance of the dining-room, bright with handsome silver plate; the dinner was served with every refinement and extravagance of Parisian luxury.

"I should have done better to take Celimene," thought he to himself.

All through the dinner Hulot was charming; pleased to see his son-in-law at that table, and yet more happy in the prospect of a reconciliation with Valerie, whose fidelity he proposed to secure by the promise of Coquet's head-clerkship. Stidmann responded to the Baron's amiability by shafts of Parisian banter and an artist's high spirits. Steinbock would not allow himself to be eclipsed by his friend; he too was witty, said amusing things, made his mark, and was pleased with himself; Madame Marneffe smiled at him several times to show that she quite understood him.

The good meal and heady wines completed the work; Wenceslas was deep in what must be called the slough of dissipation. Excited by just a glass too much, he stretched himself on a settee after dinner, sunk in physical and mental ecstasy, which Madame Marneffe wrought to the highest pitch by coming to sit down by him—airy, scented, pretty enough to damn an angel. She bent over Wenceslas and almost touched his ear as she whispered to him:

"We cannot talk over business matters this evening, unless you will remain till the last. Between us—you, Lisbeth, and me—we can settle everything to suit you."

"Ah, Madame, you are an angel!" replied Wenceslas, also in a murmur. "I was a pretty fool not to listen to Lisbeth—"

"What did she say?"

"She declared, in the Rue du Doyenne, that you loved me!"

Madame Marneffe looked at him, seemed covered with confusion, and hastily left her seat. A young and pretty woman never rouses the hope of immediate success with impunity. This retreat, the impulse of a virtuous woman who is crushing a passion in the depths of her heart, was a thousand times more effective than the most reckless avowal. Desire was so thoroughly aroused in Wenceslas that he doubled his attentions to Valerie. A woman seen by all is a woman wished for. Hence the terrible power of actresses. Madame Marneffe, knowing that she was watched, behaved like an admired actress. She was quite charming, and her success was immense.

"I no longer wonder at my father-in-law's follies," said Steinbock to Lisbeth.

"If you say such things, Wenceslas, I shall to my dying day repent of having got you the loan of these ten thousand francs. Are you, like all these men," and she indicated the guests, "madly in love with that creature? Remember, you would be your father-in-law's rival. And think of the misery you would bring on Hortense."

"That is true," said Wenceslas. "Hortense is an angel; I should be a wretch."

"And one is enough in the family!" said Lisbeth.

"Artists ought never to marry!" exclaimed Steinbock.

"Ah! that is what I always told you in the Rue du Doyenne. Your groups, your statues, your great works, ought to be your children."

"What are you talking about?" Valerie asked, joining Lisbeth.—"Give us tea, Cousin."

Steinbock, with Polish vainglory, wanted to appear familiar with this drawing-room fairy. After defying Stidmann, Vignon, and Crevel with a look, he took Valerie's hand and forced her to sit down by him on the settee.

"You are rather too lordly, Count Steinbock," said she, resisting a little. But she laughed as she dropped on to the seat, not without arranging the rosebud pinned into her bodice.

"Alas! if I were really lordly," said he, "I should not be here to borrow money."

"Poor boy! I remember how you worked all night in the Rue du Doyenne. You really were rather a spooney; you married as a starving man snatches a loaf. You knew nothing of Paris, and you see where you are landed. But you turned a deaf ear to Lisbeth's devotion, as you did to the love of a woman who knows her Paris by heart."

"Say no more!" cried Steinbock; "I am done for!"

"You shall have your ten thousand francs, my dear Wenceslas; but on one condition," she went on, playing with his handsome curls.

"What is that?"

"I will take no interest——"

"Madame!"

"Oh, you need not be indignant; you shall make it good by giving me a bronze group. You began the story of Samson; finish it.—Do a Delilah cutting off the Jewish Hercules' hair. And you, who, if you will listen to me, will be a great artist, must enter into the subject. What you have to show is the power of woman. Samson is a secondary consideration. He is the corpse of dead strength. It is Delilah —passion—that ruins everything. How far more beautiful is that replica—That is what you call it, I think—" She skilfully interpolated, as Claude Vignon and Stidmann came up to them on hearing her talk of sculpture—"how far more beautiful than the Greek myth is that replica of Hercules at Omphale's feet.—Did Greece copy Judaea, or did Judaea borrow the symbolism from Greece?"

"There, madame, you raise an important question—that of the date of the various writings in the Bible. The great and immortal Spinoza —most foolishly ranked as an atheist, whereas he gave mathematical proof of the existence of God—asserts that the Book of Genesis and all the political history of the Bible are of the time of Moses, and he demonstrates the interpolated passages by philological evidence. And he was thrice stabbed as he went into the synagogue."

"I had no idea I was so learned," said Valerie, annoyed at this interruption to her tete-a-tete.

"Women know everything by instinct," replied Claude Vignon.

"Well, then, you promise me?" she said to Steinbock, taking his hand with the timidity of a girl in love.

"You are indeed a happy man, my dear fellow," cried Stidmann, "if madame asks a favor of you!"

"What is it?" asked Claude Vignon.

"A small bronze group," replied Steinbock, "Delilah cutting off Samson's hair."

"It is difficult," remarked Vignon. "A bed——"

"On the contrary, it is exceedingly easy," replied Valerie, smiling.

"Ah ha! teach us sculpture!" said Stidmann.

"You should take madame for your subject," replied Vignon, with a keen glance at Valerie.

"Well," she went on, "this is my notion of the composition. Samson on waking finds he has no hair, like many a dandy with a false top-knot. The hero is sitting on the bed, so you need only show the foot of it, covered with hangings and drapery. There he is, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, his arms folded, his head shaven—Napoleon at Saint-Helena—what you will! Delilah is on her knees, a good deal like Canova's Magdalen. When a hussy has ruined her man, she adores him. As I see it, the Jewess was afraid of Samson in his strength and terrors, but she must have loved him when she saw him a child again. So Delilah is bewailing her sin, she would like to give her lover his hair again. She hardly dares to look at him; but she does look, with a smile, for she reads forgiveness in Samson's weakness. Such a group as this, and one of the ferocious Judith, would epitomize woman. Virtue cuts off your head; vice only cuts off your hair. Take care of your wigs, gentlemen!"

And she left the artists quite overpowered, to sing her praises in concert with the critic.

"It is impossible to be more bewitching!" cried Stidmann.

"Oh! she is the most intelligent and desirable woman I have ever met," said Claude Vignon. "Such a combination of beauty and cleverness is so rare."

"And if you who had the honor of being intimate with Camille Maupin can pronounce such a verdict," replied Stidmann, "what are we to think?"

"If you will make your Delilah a portrait of Valerie, my dear Count," said Crevel, who had risen for a moment from the card-table, and who had heard what had been said, "I will give you a thousand crowns for an example—yes, by the Powers! I will shell out to the tune of a thousand crowns!"

"Shell out! What does that mean?" asked Beauvisage of Claude Vignon.

"Madame must do me the honor to sit for it then," said Steinbock to Crevel. "Ask her—"

At this moment Valerie herself brought Steinbock a cup of tea. This was more than a compliment, it was a favor. There is a complete language in the manner in which a woman does this little civility; but women are fully aware of the fact, and it is a curious thing to study their movements, their manner, their look, tone, and accent when they perform this apparently simple act of politeness.—From the question, "Do you take tea?"—"Will you have some tea?"—"A cup of tea?" coldly asked, and followed by instructions to the nymph of the urn to bring it, to the eloquent poem of the odalisque coming from the tea-table, cup in hand, towards the pasha of her heart, presenting it submissively, offering it in an insinuating voice, with a look full of intoxicating promises, a physiologist could deduce the whole scale of feminine emotion, from aversion or indifference to Phaedra's declaration to Hippolytus. Women can make it, at will, contemptuous to the verge of insult, or humble to the expression of Oriental servility.

And Valerie was more than woman; she was the serpent made woman; she crowned her diabolical work by going up to Steinbock, a cup of tea in her hand.

"I will drink as many cups of tea as you will give me," said the artist, murmuring in her ear as he rose, and touching her fingers with his, "to have them given to me thus!"

"What were you saying about sitting?" said she, without betraying that this declaration, so frantically desired, had gone straight to her heart.

"Old Crevel promises me a thousand crowns for a copy of your group."

"He! a thousand crowns for a bronze group?"

"Yes—if you will sit for Delilah," said Steinbock.

"He will not be there to see, I hope!" replied she. "The group would be worth more than all his fortune, for Delilah's costume is rather un-dressy."

Just as Crevel loved to strike an attitude, every woman has a victorious gesture, a studied movement, which she knows must win admiration. You may see in a drawing-room how one spends all her time looking down at her tucker or pulling up the shoulder-piece of her gown, how another makes play with the brightness of her eyes by glancing up at the cornice. Madame Marneffe's triumph, however, was not face to face like that of other women. She turned sharply round to return to Lisbeth at the tea-table. This ballet-dancer's pirouette, whisking her skirts, by which she had overthrown Hulot, now fascinated Steinbock.

"Your vengeance is secure," said Valerie to Lisbeth in a whisper. "Hortense will cry out all her tears, and curse the day when she robbed you of Wenceslas."

"Till I am Madame la Marechale I shall not think myself successful," replied the cousin; "but they are all beginning to wish for it.—This morning I went to Victorin's—I forgot to tell you.—The young Hulots have bought up their father's notes of hand given to Vauvinet, and to-morrow they will endorse a bill for seventy-two thousand francs at five per cent, payable in three years, and secured by a mortgage on their house. So the young people are in straits for three years; they can raise no more money on that property. Victorin is dreadfully distressed; he understands his father. And Crevel is capable of refusing to see them; he will be so angry at this piece of self-sacrifice."

"The Baron cannot have a sou now," said Valerie, and she smiled at Hulot.

"I don't see where he can get it. But he will draw his salary again in September."

"And he has his policy of insurance; he has renewed it. Come, it is high time he should get Marneffe promoted. I will drive it home this evening."

"My dear cousin," said Lisbeth to Wenceslas, "go home, I beg. You are quite ridiculous. Your eyes are fixed on Valerie in a way that is enough to compromise her, and her husband is insanely jealous. Do not tread in your father-in-law's footsteps. Go home; I am sure Hortense is sitting up for you."

"Madame Marneffe told me to stay till the last to settle my little business with you and her," replied Wenceslas.

"No, no," said Lisbeth; "I will bring you the ten thousand francs, for her husband has his eye on you. It would be rash to remain. To-morrow at eleven o'clock bring your note of hand; at that hour that mandarin Marneffe is at his office, Valerie is free.—Have you really asked her to sit for your group?—Come up to my rooms first.—Ah! I was sure of it," she added, as she caught the look which Steinbock flashed at Valerie, "I knew you were a profligate in the bud! Well, Valerie is lovely—but try not to bring trouble on Hortense."



Nothing annoys a married man so much as finding his wife perpetually interposing between himself and his wishes, however transient.

Wenceslas got home at about one in the morning; Hortense had expected him ever since half-past nine. From half-past nine till ten she had listened to the passing carriages, telling herself that never before had her husband come in so late from dining with Florent and Chanor. She sat sewing by the child's cot, for she had begun to save a needlewoman's pay for the day by doing the mending herself.—From ten till half-past, a suspicion crossed her mind; she sat wondering:

"Is he really gone to dinner, as he told me, with Chanor and Florent? He put on his best cravat and his handsomest pin when he dressed. He took as long over his toilet as a woman when she wants to make the best of herself.—I am crazy! He loves me!—And here he is!"

But instead of stopping, the cab she heard went past.

From eleven till midnight Hortense was a victim to terrible alarms; the quarter where they lived was now deserted.

"If he has set out on foot, some accident may have happened," thought she. "A man may be killed by tumbling over a curbstone or failing to see a gap. Artists are so heedless! Or if he should have been stopped by robbers!—It is the first time he has ever left me alone here for six hours and a half!—But why should I worry myself? He cares for no one but me."

Men ought to be faithful to the wives who love them, were it only on account of the perpetual miracles wrought by true love in the sublime regions of the spiritual world. The woman who loves is, in relation to the man she loves, in the position of a somnambulist to whom the magnetizer should give the painful power, when she ceases to be the mirror of the world, of being conscious as a woman of what she has seen as a somnambulist. Passion raises the nervous tension of a woman to the ecstatic pitch at which presentiment is as acute as the insight of a clairvoyant. A wife knows she is betrayed; she will not let herself say so, she doubts still—she loves so much! She gives the lie to the outcry of her own Pythian power. This paroxysm of love deserves a special form of worship.

In noble souls, admiration of this divine phenomenon will always be a safeguard to protect them from infidelity. How should a man not worship a beautiful and intellectual creature whose soul can soar to such manifestations?

By one in the morning Hortense was in a state of such intense anguish, that she flew to the door as she recognized her husband's ring at the bell, and clasped him in her arms like a mother.

"At last—here you are!" cried she, finding her voice again. "My dearest, henceforth where you go I go, for I cannot again endure the torture of such waiting.—I pictured you stumbling over a curbstone, with a fractured skull! Killed by thieves!—No, a second time I know I should go mad.—Have you enjoyed yourself so much?—And without me! —Bad boy!"

"What can I say, my darling? There was Bixiou, who drew fresh caricatures for us; Leon de Lora, as witty as ever; Claude Vignon, to whom I owe the only consolatory article that has come out about the Montcornet statue. There were—"

"Were there no ladies?" Hortense eagerly inquired.

"Worthy Madame Florent—"

"You said the Rocher de Cancale.—Were you at the Florents'?"

"Yes, at their house; I made a mistake."

"You did not take a coach to come home?"

"No."

"And you have walked from the Rue des Tournelles?"

"Stidmann and Bixiou came back with me along the boulevards as far as the Madeleine, talking all the way."

"It is dry then on the boulevards and the Place de la Concorde and the Rue de Bourgogne? You are not muddy at all!" said Hortense, looking at her husband's patent leather boots.

It had been raining, but between the Rue Vanneau and the Rue Saint-Dominique Wenceslas had not got his boots soiled.

"Here—here are five thousand francs Chanor has been so generous as to lend me," said Wenceslas, to cut short this lawyer-like examination.

He had made a division of the ten thousand-franc notes, half for Hortense and half for himself, for he had five thousand francs' worth of debts of which Hortense knew nothing. He owed money to his foreman and his workmen.

"Now your anxieties are relieved," said he, kissing his wife. "I am going to work to-morrow morning. So I am going to bed this minute to get up early, by your leave, my pet."

The suspicion that had dawned in Hortense's mind vanished; she was miles away from the truth. Madame Marneffe! She had never thought of her. Her fear for her Wenceslas was that he should fall in with street prostitutes. The names of Bixiou and Leon de Lora, two artists noted for their wild dissipations, had alarmed her.

Next morning she saw Wenceslas go out at nine o'clock, and was quite reassured.

"Now he is at work again," said she to herself, as she proceeded to dress her boy. "I see he is quite in the vein! Well, well, if we cannot have the glory of Michael Angelo, we may have that of Benvenuto Cellini!"

Lulled by her own hopes, Hortense believed in a happy future; and she was chattering to her son of twenty months in the language of onomatopoeia that amuses babes when, at about eleven o'clock, the cook, who had not seen Wenceslas go out, showed in Stidmann.

"I beg pardon, madame," said he. "Is Wenceslas gone out already?"

"He is at the studio."

"I came to talk over the work with him."

"I will send for him," said Hortense, offering Stidmann a chair.

Thanking Heaven for this piece of luck, Hortense was glad to detain Stidmann to ask some questions about the evening before. Stidmann bowed in acknowledgment of her kindness. The Countess Steinbock rang; the cook appeared, and was desired to go at once and fetch her master from the studio.

"You had an amusing dinner last night?" said Hortense. "Wenceslas did not come in till past one in the morning."

"Amusing? not exactly," replied the artist, who had intended to fascinate Madame Marneffe. "Society is not very amusing unless one is interested in it. That little Madame Marneffe is clever, but a great flirt."

"And what did Wenceslas think of her?" asked poor Hortense, trying to keep calm. "He said nothing about her to me."

"I will only say one thing," said Stidmann, "and that is, that I think her a very dangerous woman."

Hortense turned as pale as a woman after childbirth.

"So—it was at—at Madame Marneffe's that you dined—and not—not with Chanor?" said she, "yesterday—and Wenceslas—and he——"

Stidmann, without knowing what mischief he had done, saw that he had blundered.

The Countess did not finish her sentence; she simply fainted away. The artist rang, and the maid came in. When Louise tried to get her mistress into her bedroom, a serious nervous attack came on, with violent hysterics. Stidmann, like any man who by an involuntary indiscretion has overthrown the structure built on a husband's lie to his wife, could not conceive that his words should produce such an effect; he supposed that the Countess was in such delicate health that the slightest contradiction was mischievous.

The cook presently returned to say, unfortunately in loud tones, that her master was not in the studio. In the midst of her anguish, Hortense heard, and the hysterical fit came on again.

"Go and fetch madame's mother," said Louise to the cook. "Quick—run!"

"If I knew where to find Steinbock, I would go and fetch him!" exclaimed Stidmann in despair.

"He is with that woman!" cried the unhappy wife. "He was not dressed to go to his work!"

Stidmann hurried off to Madame Marneffe's, struck by the truth of this conclusion, due to the second-sight of passion.

At that moment Valerie was posed as Delilah. Stidmann, too sharp to ask for Madame Marneffe, walked straight in past the lodge, and ran quickly up to the second floor, arguing thus: "If I ask for Madame Marneffe, she will be out. If I inquire point-blank for Steinbock, I shall be laughed at to my face.—Take the bull by the horns!"

Reine appeared in answer to his ring.

"Tell Monsieur le Comte Steinbock to come at once, his wife is dying—"

Reine, quite a match for Stidmann, looked at him with blank surprise.

"But, sir—I don't know—did you suppose——"

"I tell you that my friend Monsieur Steinbock is here; his wife is very ill. It is quite serious enough for you to disturb your mistress." And Stidmann turned on his heel.

"He is there, sure enough!" said he to himself.

And in point of fact, after waiting a few minutes in the Rue Vanneau, he saw Wenceslas come out, and beckoned to him to come quickly. After telling him of the tragedy enacted in the Rue Saint-Dominique, Stidmann scolded Steinbock for not having warned him to keep the secret of yesterday's dinner.

"I am done for," said Wenceslas, "but you are forgiven. I had totally forgotten that you were to call this morning, and I blundered in not telling you that we were to have dined with Florent.—What can I say? That Valerie has turned my head; but, my dear fellow, for her glory is well lost, misfortune well won! She really is!—Good Heavens!—But I am in a dreadful fix. Advise me. What can I say? How can I excuse myself?"

"I! advise you! I don't know," replied Stidmann. "But your wife loves you, I imagine? Well, then, she will believe anything. Tell her that you were on your way to me when I was on my way to you; that, at any rate, will set this morning's business right. Good-bye."

Lisbeth, called down by Reine, ran after Wenceslas and caught him up at the corner of the Rue Hillerin-Bertin; she was afraid of his Polish artlessness. Not wishing to be involved in the matter, she said a few words to Wenceslas, who in his joy hugged her then and there. She had no doubt pushed out a plank to enable the artist to cross this awkward place in his conjugal affairs.

At the sight of her mother, who had flown to her aid, Hortense burst into floods of tears. This happily changed the character of the hysterical attack.

"Treachery, dear mamma!" cried she. "Wenceslas, after giving me his word of honor that he would not go near Madame Marneffe, dined with her last night, and did not come in till a quarter-past one in the morning.—If you only knew! The day before we had had a discussion, not a quarrel, and I had appealed to him so touchingly. I told him I was jealous, that I should die if he were unfaithful; that I was easily suspicious, but that he ought to have some consideration for my weaknesses, as they came of my love for him; that I had my father's blood in my veins as well as yours; that at the first moment of such discovery I should be mad, and capable of mad deeds—of avenging myself—of dishonoring us all, him, his child, and myself; that I might even kill him first and myself after—and so on.

"And yet he went there; he is there!—That woman is bent on breaking all our hearts! Only yesterday my brother and Celestine pledged their all to pay off seventy thousand francs on notes of hand signed for that good-for-nothing creature.—Yes, mamma, my father would have been arrested and put into prison. Cannot that dreadful woman be content with having my father, and with all your tears? Why take my Wenceslas? —I will go to see her and stab her!"

Madame Hulot, struck to the heart by the dreadful secrets Hortense was unwittingly letting out, controlled her grief by one of the heroic efforts which a magnanimous mother can make, and drew her daughter's head on to her bosom to cover it with kisses.

"Wait for Wenceslas, my child; all will be explained. The evil cannot be so great as you picture it!—I, too, have been deceived, my dear Hortense; you think me handsome, I have lived blameless; and yet I have been utterly forsaken for three-and-twenty years—for a Jenny Cadine, a Josepha, a Madame Marneffe!—Did you know that?"

"You, mamma, you! You have endured this for twenty——"

She broke off, staggered by her own thoughts.

"Do as I have done, my child," said her mother. "Be gentle and kind, and your conscience will be at peace. On his death-bed a man may say, 'My wife has never cost me a pang!' And God, who hears that dying breath, credits it to us. If I had abandoned myself to fury like you, what would have happened? Your father would have been embittered, perhaps he would have left me altogether, and he would not have been withheld by any fear of paining me. Our ruin, utter as it now is, would have been complete ten years sooner, and we should have shown the world the spectacle of a husband and wife living quite apart—a scandal of the most horrible, heart-breaking kind, for it is the destruction of the family. Neither your brother nor you could have married.

"I sacrificed myself, and that so bravely, that, till this last connection of your father's, the world has believed me happy. My serviceable and indeed courageous falsehood has, till now, screened Hector; he is still respected; but this old man's passion is taking him too far, that I see. His own folly, I fear, will break through the veil I have kept between the world and our home. However, I have held that curtain steady for twenty-three years, and have wept behind it —motherless, I, without a friend to trust, with no help but in religion—I have for twenty-three years secured the family honor——"

Hortense listened with a fixed gaze. The calm tone of resignation and of such crowning sorrow soothed the smart of her first wound; the tears rose again and flowed in torrents. In a frenzy of filial affection, overcome by her mother's noble heroism, she fell on her knees before Adeline, took up the hem of her dress and kissed it, as pious Catholics kiss the holy relics of a martyr.

"Nay, get up, Hortense," said the Baroness. "Such homage from my daughter wipes out many sad memories. Come to my heart, and weep for no sorrows but your own. It is the despair of my dear little girl, whose joy was my only joy, that broke the solemn seal which nothing ought to have removed from my lips. Indeed, I meant to have taken my woes to the tomb, as a shroud the more. It was to soothe your anguish that I spoke.—God will forgive me!

"Oh! if my life were to be your life, what would I not do? Men, the world, Fate, Nature, God Himself, I believe, make us pay for love with the most cruel grief. I must pay for ten years of happiness and twenty-four years of despair, of ceaseless sorrow, of bitterness—"

"But you had ten years, dear mamma, and I have had but three!" said the self-absorbed girl.

"Nothing is lost yet," said Adeline. "Only wait till Wenceslas comes."

"Mother," said she, "he lied, he deceived me. He said, 'I will not go,' and he went. And that over his child's cradle."

"For pleasure, my child, men will commit the most cowardly, the most infamous actions—even crimes; it lies in their nature, it would seem. We wives are set apart for sacrifice. I believed my troubles were ended, and they are beginning again, for I never thought to suffer doubly by suffering with my child. Courage—and silence!—My Hortense, swear that you will never discuss your griefs with anybody but me, never let them be suspected by any third person. Oh! be as proud as your mother has been."

Hortense started; she had heard her husband's step.

"So it would seem," said Wenceslas, as he came in, "that Stidmann has been here while I went to see him."

"Indeed!" said Hortense, with the angry irony of an offended woman who uses words to stab.

"Certainly," said Wenceslas, affecting surprise. "We have just met."

"And yesterday?"

"Well, yesterday I deceived you, my darling love; and your mother shall judge between us."

This candor unlocked his wife's heart. All really lofty women like the truth better than lies. They cannot bear to see their idol smirched; they want to be proud of the despotism they bow to.

There is a strain of this feeling in the devotion of the Russians to their Czar.

"Now, listen, dear mother," Wenceslas went on. "I so truly love my sweet and kind Hortense, that I concealed from her the extent of our poverty. What could I do? She was still nursing the boy, and such troubles would have done her harm; you know what the risk is for a woman. Her beauty, youth, and health are imperiled. Did I do wrong? —She believes that we owe five thousand francs; but I owe five thousand more. The day before yesterday we were in the depths! No one on earth will lend to us artists. Our talents are not less untrustworthy than our whims. I knocked in vain at every door. Lisbeth, indeed, offered us her savings."

"Poor soul!" said Hortense.

"Poor soul!" said the Baroness.

"But what are Lisbeth's two thousand francs? Everything to her, nothing to us.—Then, as you know, Hortense, she spoke to us of Madame Marneffe, who, as she owes so much to the Baron, out of a sense of honor, will take no interest. Hortense wanted to send her diamonds to the Mont-de-Piete; they would have brought in a few thousand francs, but we needed ten thousand. Those ten thousand francs were to be had free of interest for a year!—I said to myself, 'Hortense will be none the wiser; I will go and get them.'

"Then the woman asked me to dinner through my father-in-law, giving me to understand that Lisbeth had spoken of the matter, and I should have the money. Between Hortense's despair on one hand, and the dinner on the other, I could not hesitate.—That is all.

"What! could Hortense, at four-and-twenty, lovely, pure, and virtuous, and all my pride and glory, imagine that, when I have never left her since we married, I could now prefer—what?—a tawny, painted, ruddled creature?" said he, using the vulgar exaggeration of the studio to convince his wife by the vehemence that women like.

"Oh! if only your father had ever spoken so——!" cried the Baroness.

Hortense threw her arms round her husband's neck.

"Yes, that is what I should have done," said her mother. "Wenceslas, my dear fellow, your wife was near dying of it," she went on very seriously. "You see how well she loves you. And, alas—she is yours!"

She sighed deeply.

"He may make a martyr of her, or a happy woman," thought she to herself, as every mother thinks when she sees her daughter married. —"It seems to me," she said aloud, "that I am miserable enough to hope to see my children happy."

"Be quite easy, dear mamma," said Wenceslas, only too glad to see this critical moment end happily. "In two months I shall have repaid that dreadful woman. How could I help it," he went on, repeating this essentially Polish excuse with a Pole's grace; "there are times when a man would borrow of the Devil.—And, after all, the money belongs to the family. When once she had invited me, should I have got the money at all if I had responded to her civility with a rude refusal?"

"Oh, mamma, what mischief papa is bringing on us!" cried Hortense.

The Baroness laid her finger on her daughter's lips, aggrieved by this complaint, the first blame she had ever uttered of a father so heroically screened by her mother's magnanimous silence.

"Now, good-bye, my children," said Madame Hulot. "The storm is over. But do not quarrel any more."

When Wenceslas and his wife returned to their room after letting out the Baroness, Hortense said to her husband:

"Tell me all about last evening."

And she watched his face all through the narrative, interrupting him by the questions that crowd on a wife's mind in such circumstances. The story made Hortense reflect; she had a glimpse of the infernal dissipation which an artist must find in such vicious company.

"Be honest, my Wenceslas; Stidmann was there, Claude Vignon, Vernisset.—Who else? In short, it was good fun?"

"I, I was thinking of nothing but our ten thousand francs, and I was saying to myself, 'My Hortense will be freed from anxiety.'"

This catechism bored the Livonian excessively; he seized a gayer moment to say:

"And you, my dearest, what would you have done if your artist had proved guilty?"

"I," said she, with an air of prompt decision, "I should have taken up Stidmann—not that I love him, of course!"

"Hortense!" cried Steinbock, starting to his feet with a sudden and theatrical emphasis. "You would not have had the chance—I would have killed you!"

Hortense threw herself into his arms, clasping him closely enough to stifle him, and covered him with kisses, saying:

"Ah, you do love me! I fear nothing!—But no more Marneffe. Never go plunging into such horrible bogs."

"I swear to you, my dear Hortense, that I will go there no more, excepting to redeem my note of hand."

She pouted at this, but only as a loving woman sulks to get something for it. Wenceslas, tired out with such a morning's work, went off to his studio to make a clay sketch of the Samson and Delilah, for which he had the drawings in his pocket.

Hortense, penitent for her little temper, and fancying that her husband was annoyed with her, went to the studio just as the sculptor had finished handling the clay with the impetuosity that spurs an artist when the mood is on him. On seeing his wife, Wenceslas hastily threw the wet wrapper over the group, and putting both arms round her, he said:

"We were not really angry, were we, my pretty puss?"

Hortense had caught sight of the group, had seen the linen thrown over it, and had said nothing; but as she was leaving, she took off the rag, looked at the model, and asked:

"What is that?"

"A group for which I had just had an idea."

"And why did you hide it?"

"I did not mean you to see it till it was finished."

"The woman is very pretty," said Hortense.

And a thousand suspicions cropped up in her mind, as, in India, tall, rank plants spring up in a night-time.



By the end of three weeks, Madame Marneffe was intensely irritated by Hortense. Women of that stamp have a pride of their own; they insist that men shall kiss the devil's hoof; they have no forgiveness for the virtue that does not quail before their dominion, or that even holds its own against them. Now, in all that time Wenceslas had not paid one visit in the Rue Vanneau, not even that which politeness required to a woman who had sat for Delilah.

Whenever Lisbeth called on the Steinbocks, there had been nobody at home. Monsieur and madame lived in the studio. Lisbeth, following the turtle doves to their nest at le Gros-Caillou, found Wenceslas hard at work, and was informed by the cook that madame never left monsieur's side. Wenceslas was a slave to the autocracy of love. So now Valerie, on her own account, took part with Lisbeth in her hatred of Hortense.

Women cling to a lover that another woman is fighting for, just as much as men do to women round whom many coxcombs are buzzing. Thus any reflections a propos to Madame Marneffe are equally applicable to any lady-killing rake; he is, in fact, a sort of male courtesan. Valerie's last fancy was a madness; above all, she was bent on getting her group; she was even thinking of going one morning to the studio to see Wenceslas, when a serious incident arose of the kind which, to a woman of that class, may be called the spoil of war.

This is how Valerie announced this wholly personal event.

She was breakfasting with Lisbeth and her husband.

"I say, Marneffe, what would you say to being a second time a father?"

"You don't mean it—a baby?—Oh, let me kiss you!"

He rose and went round the table; his wife held up her head so that he could just kiss her hair.

"If that is so," he went on, "I am head-clerk and officer of the Legion of Honor at once. But you must understand, my dear, Stanislas is not to be the sufferer, poor little man."

"Poor little man?" Lisbeth put in. "You have not set your eyes on him these seven months. I am supposed to be his mother at the school; I am the only person in the house who takes any trouble about him."

"A brat that costs us a hundred crowns a quarter!" said Valerie. "And he, at any rate, is your own child, Marneffe. You ought to pay for his schooling out of your salary.—The newcomer, far from reminding us of butcher's bills, will rescue us from want."

"Valerie," replied Marneffe, assuming an attitude like Crevel, "I hope that Monsieur le Baron Hulot will take proper charge of his son, and not lay the burden on a poor clerk. I intend to keep him well up to the mark. So take the necessary steps, madame! Get him to write you letters in which he alludes to his satisfaction, for he is rather backward in coming forward in regard to my appointment."

And Marneffe went away to the office, where his chief's precious leniency allowed him to come in at about eleven o'clock. And, indeed, he did little enough, for his incapacity was notorious, and he detested work.

No sooner were they alone than Lisbeth and Valerie looked at each other for a moment like Augurs, and both together burst into a loud fit of laughter.

"I say, Valerie—is it the fact?" said Lisbeth, "or merely a farce?"

"It is a physical fact!" replied Valerie. "Now, I am sick and tired of Hortense; and it occurred to me in the night that I might fire this infant, like a bomb, into the Steinbock household."

Valerie went back to her room, followed by Lisbeth, to whom she showed the following letter:—

"WENCESLAS MY DEAR,—I still believe in your love, though it is nearly three weeks since I saw you. Is this scorn? Delilah can scarcely believe that. Does it not rather result from the tyranny of a woman whom, as you told me, you can no longer love? Wenceslas, you are too great an artist to submit to such dominion. Home is the grave of glory.—Consider now, are you the Wenceslas of the Rue du Doyenne? You missed fire with my father's statue; but in you the lover is greater than the artist, and you have had better luck with his daughter. You are a father, my beloved Wenceslas.

"If you do not come to me in the state I am in, your friends would think very badly of you. But I love you so madly, that I feel I should never have the strength to curse you. May I sign myself as ever,

"YOUR VALERIE."

"What do you say to my scheme for sending this note to the studio at a time when our dear Hortense is there by herself?" asked Valerie. "Last evening I heard from Stidmann that Wenceslas is to pick him up at eleven this morning to go on business to Chanor's; so that gawk Hortense will be there alone."

"But after such a trick as that," replied Lisbeth, "I cannot continue to be your friend in the eyes of the world; I shall have to break with you, to be supposed never to visit you, or even to speak to you."

"Evidently," said Valerie; "but—"

"Oh! be quite easy," interrupted Lisbeth; "we shall often meet when I am Madame la Marechale. They are all set upon it now. Only the Baron is in ignorance of the plan, but you can talk him over."

"Well," said Valerie, "but it is quite likely that the Baron and I may be on distant terms before long."

"Madame Olivier is the only person who can make Hortense demand to see the letter," said Lisbeth. "And you must send her to the Rue Saint-Dominique before she goes on to the studio."

"Our beauty will be at home, no doubt," said Valerie, ringing for Reine to call up Madame Olivier.

Ten minutes after the despatch of this fateful letter, Baron Hulot arrived. Madame Marneffe threw her arms round the old man's neck with kittenish impetuosity.

"Hector, you are a father!" she said in his ear. "That is what comes of quarreling and making friends again——"

Perceiving a look of surprise, which the Baron did not at once conceal, Valerie assumed a reserve which brought the old man to despair. She made him wring the proofs from her one by one. When conviction, led on by vanity, had at last entered his mind, she enlarged on Monsieur Marneffe's wrath.

"My dear old veteran," said she, "you can hardly avoid getting your responsible editor, our representative partner if you like, appointed head-clerk and officer of the Legion of Honor, for you really have done for the poor man, he adores his Stanislas, the little monstrosity who is so like him, that to me he is insufferable. Unless you prefer to settle twelve hundred francs a year on Stanislas—the capital to be his, and the life-interest payable to me, of course—"

"But if I am to settle securities, I would rather it should be on my own son, and not on the monstrosity," said the Baron.

This rash speech, in which the words "my own son" came out as full as a river in flood, was, by the end of the hour, ratified as a formal promise to settle twelve hundred francs a year on the future boy. And this promise became, on Valerie's tongue and in her countenance, what a drum is in the hands of a child; for three weeks she played on it incessantly.

At the moment when Baron Hulot was leaving the Rue Vanneau, as happy as a man who after a year of married life still desires an heir, Madame Olivier had yielded to Hortense, and given up the note she was instructed to give only into the Count's own hands. The young wife paid twenty francs for that letter. The wretch who commits suicide must pay for the opium, the pistol, the charcoal.

Hortense read and re-read the note; she saw nothing but this sheet of white paper streaked with black lines; the universe held for her nothing but that paper; everything was dark around her. The glare of the conflagration that was consuming the edifice of her happiness lighted up the page, for blackest night enfolded her. The shouts of her little Wenceslas at play fell on her ear, as if he had been in the depths of a valley and she on a high mountain. Thus insulted at four-and-twenty, in all the splendor of her beauty, enhanced by pure and devoted love—it was not a stab, it was death. The first shock had been merely on the nerves, the physical frame had struggled in the grip of jealousy; but now certainty had seized her soul, her body was unconscious.

For about ten minutes Hortense sat under the incubus of this oppression. Then a vision of her mother appeared before her, and revulsion ensued; she was calm and cool, and mistress of her reason.

She rang.

"Get Louise to help you, child," said she to the cook. "As quickly as you can, pack up everything that belongs to me and everything wanted for the little boy. I give you an hour. When all is ready, fetch a hackney coach from the stand, and call me.

"Make no remarks! I am leaving the house, and shall take Louise with me. You must stay here with monsieur; take good care of him——"

She went into her room, and wrote the following letter:—

"MONSIEUR LE COMTE,—

"The letter I enclose will sufficiently account for the determination I have come to.

"When you read this, I shall have left your house and have found refuge with my mother, taking our child with me.

"Do not imagine that I shall retrace my steps. Do not imagine that I am acting with the rash haste of youth, without reflection, with the anger of offended affection; you will be greatly mistaken.

"I have been thinking very deeply during the last fortnight of life, of love, of our marriage, of our duties to each other. I have known the perfect devotion of my mother; she has told me all her sorrows! She has been heroical—every day for twenty-three years. But I have not the strength to imitate her, not because I love you less than she loves my father, but for reasons of spirit and nature. Our home would be a hell; I might lose my head so far as to disgrace you—disgrace myself and our child.

"I refuse to be a Madame Marneffe; once launched on such a course, a woman of my temper might not, perhaps, be able to stop. I am, unfortunately for myself, a Hulot, not a Fischer.

"Alone, and absent from the scene of your dissipations, I am sure of myself, especially with my child to occupy me, and by the side of a strong and noble mother, whose life cannot fail to influence the vehement impetuousness of my feelings. There, I can be a good mother, bring our boy up well, and live. Under your roof the wife would oust the mother; and constant contention would sour my temper.

"I can accept a death-blow, but I will not endure for twenty-five years, like my mother. If, at the end of three years of perfect, unwavering love, you can be unfaithful to me with your father-in-law's mistress, what rivals may I expect to have in later years? Indeed, monsieur, you have begun your career of profligacy much earlier than my father did, the life of dissipation, which is a disgrace to the father of a family, which undermines the respect of his children, and which ends in shame and despair.

"I am not unforgiving. Unrelenting feelings do not beseem erring creatures living under the eye of God. If you win fame and fortune by sustained work, if you have nothing to do with courtesans and ignoble, defiling ways, you will find me still a wife worthy of you.

"I believe you to be too much a gentleman, Monsieur le Comte, to have recourse to the law. You will respect my wishes, and leave me under my mother's roof. Above all, never let me see you there. I have left all the money lent to you by that odious woman.— Farewell.

"HORTENSE HULOT."

This letter was written in anguish. Hortense abandoned herself to the tears, the outcries of murdered love. She laid down her pen and took it up again, to express as simply as possible all that passion commonly proclaims in this sort of testamentary letter. Her heart went forth in exclamations, wailing and weeping; but reason dictated the words.

Informed by Louise that all was ready, the young wife slowly went round the little garden, through the bedroom and drawing-room, looking at everything for the last time. Then she earnestly enjoined the cook to take the greatest care for her master's comfort, promising to reward her handsomely if she would be honest. At last she got into the hackney coach to drive to her mother's house, her heart quite broken, crying so much as to distress the maid, and covering little Wenceslas with kisses, which betrayed her still unfailing love for his father.

The Baroness knew already from Lisbeth that the father-in-law was largely to blame for the son-in-law's fault; nor was she surprised to see her daughter, whose conduct she approved, and she consented to give her shelter. Adeline, perceiving that her own gentleness and patience had never checked Hector, for whom her respect was indeed fast diminishing, thought her daughter very right to adopt another course.

In three weeks the poor mother had suffered two wounds of which the pain was greater than any ill-fortune she had hitherto endured. The Baron had placed Victorin and his wife in great difficulties; and then, by Lisbeth's account, he was the cause of his son-in-law's misconduct, and had corrupted Wenceslas. The dignity of the father of the family, so long upheld by her really foolish self-sacrifice, was now overthrown. Though they did not regret the money the young Hulots were full alike of doubts and uneasiness as regarded the Baron. This sentiment, which was evidence enough, distressed the Baroness; she foresaw a break-up of the family tie.

Hortense was accommodated in the dining-room, arranged as a bedroom with the help of the Marshal's money, and the anteroom became the dining-room, as it is in many apartments.



When Wenceslas returned home and had read the two letters, he felt a kind of gladness mingled with regret. Kept so constantly under his wife's eye, so to speak, he had inwardly rebelled against this fresh thraldom, a la Lisbeth. Full fed with love for three years past, he too had been reflecting during the last fortnight; and he found a family heavy on his hands. He had just been congratulated by Stidmann on the passion he had inspired in Valerie; for Stidmann, with an under-thought that was not unnatural, saw that he might flatter the husband's vanity in the hope of consoling the victim. And Wenceslas was glad to be able to return to Madame Marneffe.

Still, he remembered the pure and unsullied happiness he had known, the perfections of his wife, her judgment, her innocent and guileless affection,—and he regretted her acutely. He thought of going at once to his mother-in-law's to crave forgiveness; but, in fact, like Hulot and Crevel, he went to Madame Marneffe, to whom he carried his wife's letter to show her what a disaster she had caused, and to discount his misfortune, so to speak, by claiming in return the pleasures his mistress could give him.

He found Crevel with Valerie. The mayor, puffed up with pride, marched up and down the room, agitated by a storm of feelings. He put himself into position as if he were about to speak, but he dared not. His countenance was beaming, and he went now and again to the window, where he drummed on the pane with his fingers. He kept looking at Valerie with a glance of tender pathos. Happily for him, Lisbeth presently came in.

"Cousin Betty," he said in her ear, "have you heard the news? I am a father! It seems to me I love my poor Celestine the less.—Oh! what a thing it is to have a child by the woman one idolizes! It is the fatherhood of the heart added to that of the flesh! I say—tell Valerie that I will work for that child—it shall be rich. She tells me she has some reason for believing that it will be a boy! If it is a boy, I shall insist on his being called Crevel. I will consult my notary about it."

"I know how much she loves you," said Lisbeth. "But for her sake in the future, and for your own, control yourself. Do not rub your hands every five minutes."

While Lisbeth was speaking aside on this wise to Crevel, Valerie had asked Wenceslas to give her back her letter, and she was saying things that dispelled all his griefs.

"So now you are free, my dear," said she. "Ought any great artist to marry? You live only by fancy and freedom! There, I shall love you so much, beloved poet, that you shall never regret your wife. At the same time, if, like so many people, you want to keep up appearances, I undertake to bring Hortense back to you in a very short time."

"Oh, if only that were possible!"

"I am certain of it," said Valerie, nettled. "Your poor father-in-law is a man who is in every way utterly done for; who wants to appear as though he could be loved, out of conceit, and to make the world believe that he has a mistress; and he is so excessively vain on this point, that I can do what I please with him. The Baroness is still so devoted to her old Hector—I always feel as if I were talking of the Iliad—that these two old folks will contrive to patch up matters between you and Hortense. Only, if you want to avoid storms at home for the future, do not leave me for three weeks without coming to see your mistress—I was dying of it. My dear boy, some consideration is due from a gentleman to a woman he has so deeply compromised, especially when, as in my case, she has to be very careful of her reputation.

"Stay to dinner, my darling—and remember that I must treat you with all the more apparent coldness because you are guilty of this too obvious mishap."

Baron Montes was presently announced; Valerie rose and hurried forward to meet him; she spoke a few sentences in his ear, enjoining on him the same reserve as she had impressed on Wenceslas; the Brazilian assumed a diplomatic reticence suitable to the great news which filled him with delight, for he, at any rate was sure of his paternity.

Thanks to these tactics, based on the vanity of the man in the lover stage of his existence, Valerie sat down to table with four men, all pleased and eager to please, all charmed, and each believing himself adored; called by Marneffe, who included himself, in speaking to Lisbeth, the five Fathers of the Church.

Baron Hulot alone at first showed an anxious countenance, and this was why. Just as he was leaving the office, the head of the staff of clerks had come to his private room—a General with whom he had served for thirty years—and Hulot had spoken to him as to appointing Marneffe to Coquet's place, Coquet having consented to retire.

"My dear fellow," said he, "I would not ask this favor of the Prince without our having agreed on the matter, and knowing that you approved."

"My good friend," replied the other, "you must allow me to observe that, for your own sake, you should not insist on this nomination. I have already told you my opinion. There would be a scandal in the office, where there is a great deal too much talk already about you and Madame Marneffe. This, of course, is between ourselves. I have no wish to touch you on a sensitive spot, or disoblige you in any way, and I will prove it. If you are determined to get Monsieur Coquet's place, and he will really be a loss in the War Office, for he has been here since 1809, I will go into the country for a fortnight, so as to leave the field open between you and the Marshal, who loves you as a son. Then I shall take neither part, and shall have nothing on my conscience as an administrator."

"Thank you very much," said Hulot. "I will reflect on what you have said."

"In allowing myself to say so much, my dear friend, it is because your personal interest is far more deeply implicated than any concern or vanity of mine. In the first place, the matter lies entirely with the Marshal. And then, my good fellow, we are blamed for so many things, that one more or less! We are not at the maiden stage in our experience of fault-finding. Under the Restoration, men were put in simply to give them places, without any regard for the office.—We are old friends——"

"Yes," the Baron put in; "and it is in order not to impair our old and valued friendship that I—"

"Well, well," said the departmental manager, seeing Hulot's face clouded with embarrassment, "I will take myself off, old fellow.—But I warn you! you have enemies—that is to say, men who covet your splendid appointment, and you have but one anchor out. Now if, like me, you were a Deputy, you would have nothing to fear; so mind what you are about."

This speech, in the most friendly spirit, made a deep impression on the Councillor of State.

"But, after all, Roger, what is it that is wrong? Do not make any mysteries with me."

The individual addressed as Roger looked at Hulot, took his hand, and pressed it.

"We are such old friends, that I am bound to give you warning. If you want to keep your place, you must make a bed for yourself, and instead of asking the Marshal to give Coquet's place to Marneffe, in your place I would beg him to use his influence to reserve a seat for me on the General Council of State; there you may die in peace, and, like the beaver, abandon all else to the pursuers."

"What, do you think the Marshal would forget—"

"The Marshal has already taken your part so warmly at a General Meeting of the Ministers, that you will not now be turned out; but it was seriously discussed! So give them no excuse. I can say no more. At this moment you may make your own terms; you may sit on the Council of State and be made a Peer of the Chamber. If you delay too long, if you give any one a hold against you, I can answer for nothing.—Now, am I to go?"

"Wait a little. I will see the Marshal," replied Hulot, "and I will send my brother to see which way the wind blows at headquarters."

The humor in which the Baron came back to Madame Marneffe's may be imagined; he had almost forgotten his fatherhood, for Roger had taken the part of a true and kind friend in explaining the position. At the same time Valerie's influence was so great that, by the middle of dinner, the Baron was tuned up to the pitch, and was all the more cheerful for having unwonted anxieties to conceal; but the hapless man was not yet aware that in the course of that evening he would find himself in a cleft stick, between his happiness and the danger pointed out by his friend—compelled, in short, to choose between Madame Marneffe and his official position.

At eleven o'clock, when the evening was at its gayest, for the room was full of company, Valerie drew Hector into a corner of her sofa.

"My dear old boy," said she, "your daughter is so annoyed at knowing that Wenceslas comes here, that she has left him 'planted.' Hortense is wrong-headed. Ask Wenceslas to show you the letter the little fool has written to him.

"This division of two lovers, of which I am reputed to be the cause, may do me the greatest harm, for this is how virtuous women undermine each other. It is disgraceful to pose as a victim in order to cast the blame on a woman whose only crime is that she keeps a pleasant house. If you love me, you will clear my character by reconciling the sweet turtle-doves.

"I do not in the least care about your son-in-law's visits; you brought him here—take him away again! If you have any authority in your family, it seems to me that you may very well insist on your wife's patching up this squabble. Tell the worthy old lady from me, that if I am unjustly charged with having caused a young couple to quarrel, with upsetting the unity of a family, and annexing both the father and the son-in-law, I will deserve my reputation by annoying them in my own way! Why, here is Lisbeth talking of throwing me over! She prefers to stick to her family, and I cannot blame her for it. She will throw me over, says she, unless the young people make friends again. A pretty state of things! Our expenses here will be trebled!"

"Oh, as for that!" said the Baron, on hearing of his daughter's strong measures, "I will have no nonsense of that kind."

"Very well," said Valerie. "And now for the next thing.—What about Coquet's place?"

"That," said Hector, looking away, "is more difficult, not to say impossible."

"Impossible, my dear Hector?" said Madame Marneffe in the Baron's ear. "But you do not know to what lengths Marneffe will go. I am completely in his power; he is immoral for his own gratification, like most men, but he is excessively vindictive, like all weak and impotent natures. In the position to which you have reduced me, I am in his power. I am bound to be on terms with him for a few days, and he is quite capable of refusing to leave my room any more."

Hulot started with horror.

"He would leave me alone on condition of being head-clerk. It is abominable—but logical."

"Valerie, do you love me?"

"In the state in which I am, my dear, the question is the meanest insult."

"Well, then—if I were to attempt, merely to attempt, to ask the Prince for a place for Marneffe, I should be done for, and Marneffe would be turned out."

"I thought that you and the Prince were such intimate friends."

"We are, and he has amply proved it; but, my child, there is authority above the Marshal's—for instance, the whole Council of Ministers. With time and a little tacking, we shall get there. But, to succeed, I must wait till the moment when some service is required of me. Then I can say one good turn deserves another—"

"If I tell Marneffe this tale, my poor Hector, he will play us some mean trick. You must tell him yourself that he has to wait. I will not undertake to do so. Oh! I know what my fate would be. He knows how to punish me! He will henceforth share my room——

"Do not forget to settle the twelve hundred francs a year on the little one!"

Hulot, seeing his pleasures in danger, took Monsieur Marneffe aside, and for the first time derogated from the haughty tone he had always assumed towards him, so greatly was he horrified by the thought of that half-dead creature in his pretty young wife's bedroom.

"Marneffe, my dear fellow," said he, "I have been talking of you to-day. But you cannot be promoted to the first class just yet. We must have time."

"I will be, Monsieur le Baron," said Marneffe shortly.

"But, my dear fellow—"

"I will be, Monsieur le Baron," Marneffe coldly repeated, looking alternately at the Baron and at Valerie. "You have placed my wife in a position that necessitates her making up her differences with me, and I mean to keep her; for, my dear fellow, she is a charming creature," he added, with crushing irony. "I am master here—more than you are at the War Office."

The Baron felt one of those pangs of fury which have the effect, in the heart, of a fit of raging toothache, and he could hardly conceal the tears in his eyes.

During this little scene, Valerie had been explaining Marneffe's imaginary determination to Montes, and thus had rid herself of him for a time.

Of her four adherents, Crevel alone was exempted from the rule —Crevel, the master of the little "bijou" apartment; and he displayed on his countenance an air of really insolent beatitude, notwithstanding the wordless reproofs administered by Valerie in frowns and meaning grimaces. His triumphant paternity beamed in every feature.

When Valerie was whispering a word of correction in his ear, he snatched her hand, and put in:

"To-morrow, my Duchess, you shall have your own little house! The papers are to be signed to-morrow."

"And the furniture?" said she, with a smile.

"I have a thousand shares in the Versailles rive gauche railway. I bought them at twenty-five, and they will go up to three hundred in consequence of the amalgamation of the two lines, which is a secret told to me. You shall have furniture fit for a queen. But then you will be mine alone henceforth?"

"Yes, burly Maire," said this middle-class Madame de Merteuil. "But behave yourself; respect the future Madame Crevel."

"My dear cousin," Lisbeth was saying to the Baron, "I shall go to see Adeline early to-morrow; for, as you must see, I cannot, with any decency, remain here. I will go and keep house for your brother the Marshal."

"I am going home this evening," said Hulot.

"Very well, you will see me at breakfast to-morrow," said Lisbeth, smiling.

She understood that her presence would be necessary at the family scene that would take place on the morrow. And the very first thing in the morning she went to see Victorin and to tell him that Hortense and Wenceslas had parted.

When the Baron went home at half-past ten, Mariette and Louise, who had had a hard day, were locking up the apartment. Hulot had not to ring.

Very much put out at this compulsory virtue, the husband went straight to his wife's room, and through the half-open door he saw her kneeling before her Crucifix, absorbed in prayer, in one of those attitudes which make the fortune of the painter or the sculptor who is so happy to invent and then to express them. Adeline, carried away by her enthusiasm, was praying aloud:

"O God, have mercy and enlighten him!"

The Baroness was praying for her Hector.

At this sight, so unlike what he had just left, and on hearing this petition founded on the events of the day, the Baron heaved a sigh of deep emotion. Adeline looked round, her face drowned in tears. She was so convinced that her prayer had been heard, that, with one spring, she threw her arms round Hector with the impetuosity of happy affection. Adeline had given up all a wife's instincts; sorrow had effaced even the memory of them. No feeling survived in her but those of motherhood, of the family honor, and the pure attachment of a Christian wife for a husband who has gone astray—the saintly tenderness which survives all else in a woman's soul.

"Hector!" she said, "are you come back to us? Has God taken pity on our family?"

"Dear Adeline," replied the Baron, coming in and seating his wife by his side on a couch, "you are the saintliest creature I ever knew; I have long known myself to be unworthy of you."

"You would have very little to do, my dear," said she, holding Hulot's hand and trembling so violently that it was as though she had a palsy, "very little to set things in order—"

She dared not proceed; she felt that every word would be a reproof, and she did not wish to mar the happiness with which this meeting was inundating her soul.

"It is Hortense who has brought me here," said Hulot. "That child may do us far more harm by her hasty proceeding than my absurd passion for Valerie has ever done. But we will discuss all this to-morrow morning. Hortense is asleep, Mariette tells me; we will not disturb her."

"Yes," said Madame Hulot, suddenly plunged into the depths of grief.

She understood that the Baron's return was prompted not so much by the wish to see his family as by some ulterior interest.

"Leave her in peace till to-morrow," said the mother. "The poor child is in a deplorable condition; she has been crying all day."



At nine the next morning, the Baron, awaiting his daughter, whom he had sent for, was pacing the large, deserted drawing-room, trying to find arguments by which to conquer the most difficult form of obstinacy there is to deal with—that of a young wife, offended and implacable, as blameless youth ever is, in its ignorance of the disgraceful compromises of the world, of its passions and interests.

"Here I am, papa," said Hortense in a tremulous voice, and looking pale from her miseries.

Hulot, sitting down, took his daughter round the waist, and drew her down to sit on his knee.

"Well, my child," said he, kissing her forehead, "so there are troubles at home, and you have been hasty and headstrong? That is not like a well-bred child. My Hortense ought not to have taken such a decisive step as that of leaving her house and deserting her husband on her own account, and without consulting her parents. If my darling girl had come to see her kind and admirable mother, she would not have given me this cruel pain I feel!—You do not know the world; it is malignantly spiteful. People will perhaps say that your husband sent you back to your parents. Children brought up as you were, on your mother's lap, remain artless; maidenly passion like yours for Wenceslas, unfortunately, makes no allowances; it acts on every impulse. The little heart is moved, the head follows suit. You would burn down Paris to be revenged, with no thought of the courts of justice!

"When your old father tells you that you have outraged the proprieties, you may take his word for it.—I say nothing of the cruel pain you have given me. It is bitter, I assure you, for you throw all the blame on a woman of whose heart you know nothing, and whose hostility may become disastrous. And you, alas! so full of guileless innocence and purity, can have no suspicions; but you may be vilified and slandered.—Besides, my darling pet, you have taken a foolish jest too seriously. I can assure you, on my honor, that your husband is blameless. Madame Marneffe—"

So far the Baron, artistically diplomatic, had formulated his remonstrances very judiciously. He had, as may be observed, worked up to the mention of this name with superior skill; and yet Hortense, as she heard it, winced as if stung to the quick.

"Listen to me; I have had great experience, and I have seen much," he went on, stopping his daughter's attempt to speak. "That lady is very cold to your husband. Yes, you have been made the victim of a practical joke, and I will prove it to you. Yesterday Wenceslas was dining with her—"

"Dining with her!" cried the young wife, starting to her feet, and looking at her father with horror in every feature. "Yesterday! After having had my letter! Oh, great God!—Why did I not take the veil rather than marry? But now my life is not my own! I have the child!" and she sobbed.

Her weeping went to Madame Hulot's heart. She came out of her room and ran to her daughter, taking her in her arms, and asking her those questions, stupid with grief, which first rose to her lips.

"Now we have tears," said the Baron to himself, "and all was going so well! What is to be done with women who cry?"

"My child," said the Baroness, "listen to your father! He loves us all —come, come—"

"Come, Hortense, my dear little girl, cry no more, you make yourself too ugly!" said the Baron, "Now, be a little reasonable. Go sensibly home, and I promise you that Wenceslas shall never set foot in that woman's house. I ask you to make the sacrifice, if it is a sacrifice to forgive the husband you love so small a fault. I ask you—for the sake of my gray hairs, and of the love you owe your mother. You do not want to blight my later years with bitterness and regret?"

Hortense fell at her father's feet like a crazed thing, with the vehemence of despair; her hair, loosely pinned up, fell about her, and she held out her hands with an expression that painted her misery.

"Father," she said, "ask my life! Take it if you will, but at least take it pure and spotless, and I will yield it up gladly. Do not ask me to die in dishonor and crime. I am not at all like my husband; I cannot swallow an outrage. If I went back under my husband's roof, I should be capable of smothering him in a fit of jealousy—or of doing worse! Do no exact from me a thing that is beyond my powers. Do not have to mourn for me still living, for the least that can befall me is to go mad. I feel madness close upon me!

"Yesterday, yesterday, he could dine with that woman, after having read my letter?—Are other men made so? My life I give you, but do not let my death be ignominious!—His fault?—A small one! When he has a child by that woman!"

"A child!" cried Hulot, starting back a step or two. "Come. This is really some fooling."

At this juncture Victorin and Lisbeth arrived, and stood dumfounded at the scene. The daughter was prostrate at her father's feet. The Baroness, speechless between her maternal feelings and her conjugal duty, showed a harassed face bathed in tears.

"Lisbeth," said the Baron, seizing his cousin by the hand and pointing to Hortense, "you can help me here. My poor child's brain is turned; she believes that her Wenceslas is Madame Marneffe's lover, while all that Valerie wanted was to have a group by him."

"Delilah!" cried the young wife. "The only thing he has done since our marriage. The man would not work for me or for his son, and he has worked with frenzy for that good-for-nothing creature.—Oh, father, kill me outright, for every word stabs like a knife!"

Lisbeth turned to the Baroness and Victorin, pointing with a pitying shrug to the Baron, who could not see her.

"Listen to me," said she to him. "I had no idea—when you asked me to go to lodge over Madame Marneffe and keep house for her—I had no idea of what she was; but many things may be learned in three years. That creature is a prostitute, and one whose depravity can only be compared with that of her infamous and horrible husband. You are the dupe, my lord pot-boiler, of those people; you will be led further by them than you dream of! I speak plainly, for you are at the bottom of a pit."

The Baroness and her daughter, hearing Lisbeth speak in this style, cast adoring looks at her, such as the devout cast at a Madonna for having saved their life.

"That horrible woman was bent on destroying your son-in-law's home. To what end?—I know not. My brain is not equal to seeing clearly into these dark intrigues—perverse, ignoble, infamous! Your Madame Marneffe does not love your son-in-law, but she will have him at her feet out of revenge. I have just spoken to the wretched woman as she deserves. She is a shameless courtesan; I have told her that I am leaving her house, that I would not have my honor smirched in that muck-heap.—I owe myself to my family before all else.

"I knew that Hortense had left her husband, so here I am. Your Valerie, whom you believe to be a saint, is the cause of this miserable separation; can I remain with such a woman? Our poor little Hortense," said she, touching the Baron's arm, with peculiar meaning, "is perhaps the dupe of a wish of such women as these, who, to possess a toy, would sacrifice a family.

"I do not think Wenceslas guilty; but I think him weak, and I cannot promise that he will not yield to her refinements of temptation.—My mind is made up. The woman is fatal to you; she will bring you all to utter ruin. I will not even seem to be concerned in the destruction of my own family, after living there for three years solely to hinder it.

"You are cheated, Baron; say very positively that you will have nothing to say to the promotion of that dreadful Marneffe, and you will see then! There is a fine rod in pickle for you in that case."

Lisbeth lifted up Hortense and kissed her enthusiastically.

"My dear Hortense, stand firm," she whispered.

The Baroness embraced Lisbeth with the vehemence of a woman who sees herself avenged. The whole family stood in perfect silence round the father, who had wit enough to know what that silence implied. A storm of fury swept across his brow and face with evident signs; the veins swelled, his eyes were bloodshot, his flesh showed patches of color. Adeline fell on her knees before him and seized his hands.

"My dear, forgive, my dear!"

"You loathe me!" cried the Baron—the cry of his conscience.

For we all know the secret of our own wrong-doing. We almost always ascribe to our victims the hateful feelings which must fill them with the hope of revenge; and in spite of every effort of hypocrisy, our tongue or our face makes confession under the rack of some unexpected anguish, as the criminal of old confessed under the hands of the torturer.

"Our children," he went on, to retract the avowal, "turn at last to be our enemies—"

"Father!" Victorin began.

"You dare to interrupt your father!" said the Baron in a voice of thunder, glaring at his son.

"Father, listen to me," Victorin went on in a clear, firm voice, the voice of a puritanical deputy. "I know the respect I owe you too well ever to fail in it, and you will always find me the most respectful and submissive of sons."

Those who are in the habit of attending the sittings of the Chamber will recognize the tactics of parliamentary warfare in these fine-drawn phrases, used to calm the factions while gaining time.

"We are far from being your enemies," his son went on. "I have quarreled with my father-in-law, Monsieur Crevel, for having rescued your notes of hand for sixty thousand francs from Vauvinet, and that money is, beyond doubt, in Madame Marneffe's pocket.—I am not finding fault with you, father," said he, in reply to an impatient gesture of the Baron's; "I simply wish to add my protest to my cousin Lisbeth's, and to point out to you that though my devotion to you as a father is blind and unlimited, my dear father, our pecuniary resources, unfortunately, are very limited."

"Money!" cried the excitable old man, dropping on to a chair, quite crushed by this argument. "From my son!—You shall be repaid your money, sir," said he, rising, and he went to the door.

"Hector!"

At this cry the Baron turned round, suddenly showing his wife a face bathed in tears; she threw her arms round him with the strength of despair.

"Do not leave us thus—do not go away in anger. I have not said a word —not I!"

At this heart-wrung speech the children fell at their father's feet.

"We all love you," said Hortense.

Lisbeth, as rigid as a statue, watched the group with a superior smile on her lips. Just then Marshal Hulot's voice was heard in the anteroom. The family all felt the importance of secrecy, and the scene suddenly changed. The young people rose, and every one tried to hide all traces of emotion.

A discussion was going on at the door between Mariette and a soldier, who was so persistent that the cook came in.

"Monsieur, a regimental quartermaster, who says he is just come from Algiers, insists on seeing you."

"Tell him to wait."

"Monsieur," said Mariette to her master in an undertone, "he told me to tell you privately that it has to do with your uncle there."

The Baron started; he believed that the funds had been sent at last which he had been asking for these two months, to pay up his bills; he left the family-party, and hurried out to the anteroom.

"You are Monsieur de Paron Hulot?"

"Yes."

"Your own self?"

"My own self."

The man, who had been fumbling meanwhile in the lining of his cap, drew out a letter, of which the Baron hastily broke the seal, and read as follows:—

"DEAR NEPHEW,—Far from being able to send you the hundred thousand francs you ask of me, my present position is not tenable unless you can take some decisive steps to save me. We are saddled with a public prosecutor who talks goody, and rhodomontades nonsense about the management. It is impossible to get the black-chokered pump to hold his tongue. If the War Minister allows civilians to feed out of his hand, I am done for. I can trust the bearer; try to get him promoted; he has done us good service. Do not abandon me to the crows!"

This letter was a thunderbolt; the Baron could read in it the intestine warfare between civil and military authorities, which to this day hampers the Government, and he was required to invent on the spot some palliative for the difficulty that stared him in the face. He desired the soldier to come back next day, dismissing him with splendid promises of promotion, and he returned to the drawing-room. "Good-day and good-bye, brother," said he to the Marshal.—"Good-bye, children.—Good-bye, my dear Adeline.—And what are you going to do, Lisbeth?" he asked.