The Muse of the Department.............................................................................................................................1

Honore de Balzac .....................................................................................................................................1

On the skirts of Le Berry stands a town which, watered by the Loire, infallibly attracts the traveler's eye.

Sancerre crowns the topmost height of a chain of hills, the last of the range that gives variety to the Nivernais.

The Loire floods the flats at the foot of these slopes, leaving a yellow alluvium that is extremely fertile,

excepting in those places where it has deluged them with sand and destroyed them forever, by one of those

terrible risings which are also incidental to the Vistulathe Loire of the northern coast.

The hill on which the houses of Sancerre are grouped is so far from the river that the little riverport of

SaintThibault thrives on the life of Sancerre. There wine is shipped and oak staves are landed, with all the

produce brought from the upper and lower Loire. At the period when this story begins the suspension bridges

at Cosne and at SaintThibault were already built. Travelers from Paris to Sancerre by the southern road were

no longer ferried across the river from Cosne to SaintThibault; and this of itself is enough to show that the

great crossshuffle of 1830 was a thing of the past, for the House of Orleans has always had a care for

substantial improvements, though somewhat after the fashion of a husband who makes his wife presents out

Excepting that part of Sancerre which occupies the little plateau, the streets are more or less steep, and the

town is surrounded by slopes known as the Great Ramparts, a name which shows that they are the highroads

Outside the ramparts lies a belt of vineyards. Wine forms the chief industry and the most important trade of

the country, which yields several vintages of highclass wine full of aroma, and so nearly resembling the

wines of Burgundy, that the vulgar palate is deceived. So Sancerre finds in the wineshops of Paris the quick

market indispensable for liquor that will not keep for more than seven or eight years. Below the town lie a

few villages, Fontenoy and Saint Satur, almost suburbs, reminding us by their situation of the smiling

The town still bears much of its ancient aspect; the streets are narrow and paved with pebbles carted up from

the Loire. Some old houses are to be seen there. The citadel, a relic of military power and feudal times, stood

one of the most terrible sieges of our religious wars, when French Calvinists far outdid the ferocious

The town of Sancerre, rich in its greater past, but widowed now of its military importance, is doomed to an

even less glorious future, for the course of trade lies on the right bank of the Loire. The sketch here given

shows that Sancerre will be left more and more lonely in spite of the two bridges connecting it with Cosne.

Sancerre, the pride of the left bank, numbers three thousand five hundred inhabitants at most, while at Cosne

there are now more than six thousand. Within half a century the part played by these two towns standing

opposite each other has been reversed. The advantage of situation, however, remains with the historic town,

whence the view on every side is perfectly enchanting, where the air is deliciously pure, the vegetation

splendid, and the residents, in harmony with nature, are friendly souls, good fellows, and devoid of

Puritanism, though twothirds of the population are Calvinists. Under such conditions, though there are the

usual disadvantages of life in a small town, and each one lives under the officious eye which makes private

life almost a public concern, on the other hand, the spirit of townshipa sort of patriotism, which cannot

Thus the town of Sancerre is exceedingly proud of having given birth to one of the glories of modern

medicine, Horace Bianchon, and to an author of secondary rank, Etienne Lousteau, one of our most

successful journalists. The district included under the municipality of Sancerre, distressed at finding itself

practically ruled by seven or eight large landowners, the wirepullers of the elections, tried to shake off the

electoral yoke of a creed which had reduced it to a rotten borough. This little conspiracy, plotted by a handful

of men whose vanity was provoked, failed through the jealousy which the elevation of one of them, as the

inevitable result, roused in the breasts of the others. This result showed the radical defect of the scheme, and

the remedy then suggested was to rally round a champion at the next election, in the person of one of the two

This idea was extraordinarily advanced for the provinces, for since 1830 the nomination of parochial

dignitaries has increased so greatly that real statesmen are becoming rare indeed in the lower chamber.

In point of fact, this plan, of very doubtful outcome, was hatched in the brain of the Superior Woman of the

borough, dux femina fasti, but with a view to personal interest. This idea was so widely rooted in this lady's

past life, and so entirely comprehended her future prospects, that it can scarcely be understood without some

Sancerre at that time could boast of a Superior Woman, long misprized indeed, but now, about 1836,

enjoying a pretty extensive local reputation. This, too, was the period at which two Sancerrois in Paris were

attaining, each in his own line, to the highest degree of glory for one, and of fashion for the other. Etienne

Lousteau, a writer in reviews, signed his name to contributions to a paper that had eight thousand subscribers;

and Bianchon, already chief physician to a hospital, Officer of the Legion of Honor, and member of the

If it were not that the word would to many readers seem to imply a degree of blame, it might be said that

George Sand created Sandism, so true is it that, morally speaking, all good has a reverse of evil. This leprosy

of sentimentality would have been charming. Still, Sandism has its good side, in that the woman attacked by

it bases her assumption of superiority on feelings scorned; she is a blue stocking of sentiment; and she is

rather less of a bore, love to some extent neutralizing literature. The most conspicuous result of George

Sand's celebrity was to elicit the fact that France has a perfectly enormous number of superior women, who

have, however, till now been so generous as to leave the field to the Marechal de Saxe's granddaughter.

The Superior Woman of Sancerre lived at La Baudraye, a townhouse and countryhouse in one, within ten

minutes of the town, and in the village, or, if you will, the suburb of SaintSatur. The La Baudrayes of the

present day have, as is frequently the case, thrust themselves in, and are but a substitute for those La

Baudrayes whose name, glorious in the Crusades, figured in the chief events of the history of Le Berry.

In the time of Louis XIV. a certain sheriff named Milaud, whose forefathers had been furious Calvinists, was

converted at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. To encourage this movement in one of the

strongholds of Calvinism, the King gave said Milaud a good appointment in the "Waters and Forests,"

granted him arms and the title of Sire (or Lord) de la Baudraye, with the fief of the old and genuine La

Baudrayes. The descendants of the famous Captain la Baudraye fell, sad to say, into one of the snares laid for

heretics by the new decrees, and were hangedan unworthy deed of the great King's.

Under Louis XV. Milaud de la Baudraye, from being a mere squire, was made Chevalier, and had influence

enough to obtain for his son a cornet's commission in the Musketeers. This officer perished at Fontenoy,

leaving a child, to whom King Louis XVI. subsequently granted the privileges, by patent, of a

This financier, a fashionable wit, great at charades, capping verses, and posies to Chlora, lived in society, was

a hangeron to the Duc de Nivernais, and fancied himself obliged to follow the nobility into exile; but he

took care to carry his money with him. Thus the rich emigre was able to assist more than one family of high

In 1800, tired of hoping, and perhaps tired of lending, he returned to Sancerre, bought back La Baudraye out

of a feeling of vanity and imaginary pride, quite intelligible in a sheriff's grandson, though under the

consulate his prospects were but slender; all the more so, indeed, because the exfarmergeneral had small

Jean Athanase Polydore Milaud de la Baudraye, his only son, more than delicate from his birth, was very

evidently the child of a man whose constitution had early been exhausted by the excesses in which rich men

indulge, who then marry at the first stage of premature old age, and thus bring degeneracy into the highest

circles of society. During the years of the emigration Madame de la Baudraye, a girl of no fortune, chosen for

her noble birth, had patiently reared this sallow, sickly boy, for whom she had the devoted love mothers feel

for such changeling creatures. Her deathshe was a Casteran de la Tour contributed to bring about

This Lucullus of the Milauds, when he died, left his son the fief, stripped indeed of its fines and dues, but

graced with weathercocks bearing his coatofarms, a thousand louisd'orin 1802 a considerable sum of

moneyand certain receipts for claims on very distinguished emigres enclosed in a pocketbook full of

verses, with this inscription on the wrapper, Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.

Young La Baudraye did not die, but he owed his life to habits of monastic strictness; to the economy of

action which Fontenelle preached as the religion of the invalid; and, above all, to the air of Sancerre and the

influence of its fine elevation, whence a panorama over the valley of the Loire may be seen extending for

From 1802 to 1815 young La Baudraye added several plots to his vineyards, and devoted himself to the

culture of the vine. The Restoration seemed to him at first so insecure that he dared not go to Paris to claim

his debts; but after Napoleon's death he tried to turn his father's collection of autographs into money, though

not understanding the deep philosophy which had thus mixed up I O U's and copies of verses. But the

winegrower lost so much time in impressing his identity on the Duke of Navarreins "and others," as he

phrased it, that he came back to Sancerre, to his beloved vintage, without having obtained anything but offers

The Restoration had raised the nobility to such a degree of lustre as made La Baudraye wish to justify his

ambitions by having an heir. This happy result of matrimony he considered doubtful, or he would not so long

have postponed the step; however, finding himself still above ground in 1823, at the age of fortythree, a

length of years which no doctor, astrologer, or midwife would have dared to promise him, he hoped to earn

the reward of his sober life. And yet his choice showed such a lack of prudence in regard to his frail

constitution, that the malicious wit of a country town could not help thinking it must be the result of some

Just at this time His Eminence, Monseigneur the Archbishop of Bourges, had converted to the Catholic faith

a young person, the daughter of one of the citizen families, who were the first upholders of Calvinism, and

who, thanks to their obscurity or to some compromise with Heaven, had escaped from the persecutions under

Louis XIV. The Piedefersa name that was obviously one of the quaint nicknames assumed by the

champions of the Reformationhad set up as highly respectable cloth merchants. But in the reign of Louis

XVI., Abraham Piedefer fell into difficulties, and at his death in 1786 left his two children in extreme

poverty. One of them, Tobie Piedefer, went out to the Indies, leaving the pittance they had inherited to his

elder brother. During the Revolution Moise Piedefer bought up the nationalized land, pulled down abbeys and

churches with all the zeal of his ancestors, oddly enough, and married a Catholic, the only daughter of a

member of the Convention who had perished on the scaffold. This ambitious Piedefer died in 1819, leaving a

little girl of remarkable beauty. This child, brought up in the Calvinist faith, was named Dinah, in accordance

with the custom in use among the sect, of taking their Christian names from the Bible, so as to have nothing

Mademoiselle Dinah Piedefer was placed by her mother in one of the best schools in Bourges, that kept by

the Demoiselles Chamarolles, and was soon as highly distinguished for the qualities of her mind as for her

beauty; but she found herself snubbed by girls of birth and fortune, destined byandby to play a greater part

in the world than a mere plebeian, the daughter of a mother who was dependent on the settlement of

Piedefer's estate. Dinah, having raised herself for the moment above her companions, now aimed at

remaining on a level with them for the rest of her life. She determined, therefore, to renounce Calvinism, in

the hope that the Cardinal would extend his favor to his proselyte and interest himself in her prospects. You

may from this judge of Mademoiselle Dinah's superiority, since at the age of seventeen she was a convert

The Archbishop, possessed with the idea that Dinah Piedefer would adorn society, was anxious to see her

married. But every family to whom the prelate made advances took fright at a damsel gifted with the looks of

a princess, who was reputed to be the cleverest of Mademoiselle Chamarolles' pupils and who, at the

somewhat theatrical ceremonial of prizegiving, always took a leading part. A thousand crowns a year, which

was as much as she could hope for from the estate of La Hautoy when divided between the mother and

daughter, would be a mere trifle in comparison with the expenses into which a husband would be led by the

As soon as all these facts came to the ears of little Polydore de la Baudrayefor they were the talk of every

circle in the Department of the Cherhe went to Bourges just when Madame Piedefer, a devotee at high

services, had almost made up her own mind and her daughter's to take the first comer with welllined

pocketsthe first chien coiffe, as they say in Le Berry. And if the Cardinal was delighted to receive

Monsieur de la Baudraye, Monsieur de la Baudraye was even better pleased to receive a wife from the hands

of the Cardinal. The little gentleman only demanded of His Eminence a formal promise to support his claims

with the President of the Council to enable him to recover his debts from the Duc de Navarreins "and others"

by a lien on their indemnities. This method, however, seemed to the able Minister then occupying the

Pavillon Marsan rather too sharp practice, and he gave the vineowner to understand that his business should

It is easy to imagine the excitement produced in the Sancerre district by the news of Monsieur de la

"It is quite intelligible," said President Boirouge; "the little man was very much startled, as I am told, at

hearing that handsome young Milaud, the AttorneyGeneral's deputy at Nevers, say to Monsieur de Clagny

as they were looking at the turrets of La Baudraye, 'That will be mine some day.''But,' says Clagny, 'he

may marry and have children.''Impossible!'So you may imagine how such a changeling as little La

There was at Nevers a plebeian branch of the Milauds, which had grown so rich in the cutlery trade that the

present representative of that branch had been brought up to the civil service, in which he had enjoyed the

It will be as well to eliminate from this story, in which moral developments play the principal part, the baser

material interests which alone occupied Monsieur de la Baudraye, by briefly relating the results of his

negotiations in Paris. This will also throw light on certain mysterious phenomena of contemporary history,

and the underground difficulties in matters of politics which hampered the Ministry at the time of the

The promises of Ministers were so illusory that Monsieur de la Baudraye determined on going to Paris at the

time when the Cardinal's presence was required there by the sitting of the Chambers.

This is how the Duc de Navarreins, the principal debtor threatened by Monsieur de la Baudraye, got out of

The country gentleman, lodging at the Hotel de Mayence, Rue Saint Honore, near the Place Vendome, one

morning received a visit from a confidential agent of the Ministry, who was an expert in "winding up"

business. This elegant personage, who stepped out of an elegant cab, and was dressed in the most elegant

style, was requested to walk up to No. 3that is to say, to the third floor, to a small room where he found his

After examining this garment, the illicit offspring of an old chine wrapper of Madame Piedefer's and a gown

of the late lamented Madame de la Baudraye, the emissary considered the man, the dressinggown, and the

little stove on which the milk was boiling in a tin saucepan, as so homogeneous and characteristic, that he

"I will lay a wager, monsieur," said he, audaciously, "that you dine for forty sous at Hurbain's in the Palais

"Oh, I know you, having seen you there," replied the Parisian with perfect gravity. "All the princes' creditors

dine there. You know that you recover scarcely ten per cent on debts from these fine gentlemen. I would not

give you five per cent on a debt to be recovered from the estate of the late Duc d'Orleansnor even," he

"So you have come to buy up the bills?" said La Baudraye, thinking himself very clever.

"Buy them!" said his visitor. "Why, what do you take me for? I am Monsieur des Lupeaulx, Master of

Appeals, SecretaryGeneral to the Ministry, and I have come to propose an arrangement."

"Well, monsieur, you understand the position of your debtors; they stand high in the King's good graces, but

they have no money, and are obliged to make a good show.Again, you know the difficulties of the political

situation. The aristocracy has to be rehabilitated in the face of a very strong force of the third estate. The

King's ideaand France does him scant justiceis to create a peerage as a national institution analogous to

the English peerage. To realize this grand idea we need yearsand millions.Noblesse oblige. The Duc de

Navarreins, who is, as you know, first gentleman of the Bedchamber to the King, does not repudiate his debt;

but he cannotNow, be reasonable.Consider the state of politics. We are emerging from the pit of the

"You are hasty," said des Lupeaulx. "Listen. He cannot pay in money. Well, then; you, a clever man, can take

"My dear sir, recrimination is useless. Listen to a simple statement in political arithmetic: The collectorship at

Sancerre is vacant; a certain paymastergeneral of the forces has a claim on it, but he has no chance of

getting it; you have the chanceand no claim. You will get the place. You will hold it for three months, you

will then resign, and Monsieur Gravier will give twenty thousand francs for it. In addition, the Order of the

"Well, that is something," said the winegrower, tempted by the money rather than by the red ribbon.

"But then," said des Lupeaulx, "you must show your gratitude to His Excellency by restoring to Monseigneur

La Baudraye returned to Sancerre as Collector of Taxes. Six months later he was superseded by Monsieur

Gravier, regarded as one of the most agreeable financiers who had served under the Empire, and who was of

As soon as he was released from his functions, Monsieur de la Baudraye returned to Paris to come to an

understanding with some other debtors. This time he was made a Referendary under the Great Seal, Baron,

and Officer of the Legion of Honor. He sold the appointment as Referendary; and then the Baron de la

Baudraye called on his last remaining debtors, and reappeared at Sancerre as Master of Appeals, with an

appointment as Royal Commissioner to a commercial association established in the Nivernais, at a salary of

six thousand francs, an absolute sinecure. So the worthy La Baudraye, who was supposed to have committed

a financial blunder, had, in fact, done very good business in the choice of a wife.

Thanks to sordid economy and an indemnity paid him for the estate belonging to his father, nationalized and

sold in 1793, by the year 1827 the little man could realize the dream of his whole life. By paying four

hundred thousand francs down, and binding himself to further instalments, which compelled him to live for

six years on the air as it came, to use his own expression, he was able to purchase the estate of Anzy on the

banks of the Loire, about two leagues above Sancerre, and its magnificent castle built by Philibert de l'Orme,

the admiration of every connoisseur, and for five centuries the property of the Uxelles family. At last he was

one of the great landowners of the province! It is not absolutely certain that the satisfaction of knowing that

an entail had been created, by letters patent dated back to December 1820, including the estates of Anzy, of

La Baudraye, and of La Hautoy, was any compensation to Dinah on finding herself reduced to unconfessed

This sketch of the financial policy of the first Baron de la Baudraye explains the man completely. Those who

are familiar with the manias of country folks will recognize in him the landhunger which becomes such a

consuming passion to the exclusion of every other; a sort of avarice displayed in the sight of the sun, which

often leads to ruin by a want of balance between the interest on mortgages and the products of the soil. Those

who, from 1802 till 1827, had merely laughed at the little man as they saw him trotting to SaintThibault and

attending to his business, like a merchant living on his vineyards, found the answer to the riddle when the

antlion seized his prey, after waiting for the day when the extravagance of the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse

Madame Piedefer came to live with her daughter. The combined fortunes of Monsieur de la Baudraye and his

motherinlaw, who had been content to accept an annuity of twelve hundred francs on the lands of La

Hautoy which she handed over to him, amounted to an acknowledged income of about fifteen thousand

During the early days of her married life, Dinah had effected some alterations which had made the house at

La Baudraye a very pleasant residence. She turned a spacious forecourt into a formal garden, pulling down

winestores, presses, and shabby outhouses. Behind the manorhouse, which, though small, did not lack

style with its turrets and gables, she laid out a second garden with shrubs, flowerbeds, and lawns, and

divided it from the vineyards by a wall hidden under creepers. She also made everything within doors as

In order not to be ruined by a young lady so very superior as Dinah seemed to be, Monsieur de la Baudraye

was shrewd enough to say nothing as to the recovery of debts in Paris. This dead secrecy as to his money

matters gave a touch of mystery to his character, and lent him dignity in his wife's eyes during the first years

The alterations effected at La Baudraye made everybody eager to see the young mistress, all the more so

because Dinah would never show herself, nor receive any company, before she felt quite settled in her home

and had thoroughly studied the inhabitants, and, above all, her taciturn husband. When, one spring morning

in 1825, pretty Madame de la Baudraye was first seen walking on the Mall in a blue velvet dress, with her

mother in black velvet, there was quite an excitement in Sancerre. This dress confirmed the young woman's

reputation for superiority, brought up, as she had been, in the capital of Le Berry. Every one was afraid lest in

entertaining this phoenix of the Department, the conversation should not be clever enough; and, of course,

everybody was constrained in the presence of Madame de la Baudraye, who produced a sort of terror among

the womanfolk. As they admired a carpet of Indian shawlpattern in the La Baudraye drawing room, a

Pompadour writingtable carved and gilt, brocade window curtains, and a Japanese bowl full of flowers on

the round table among a selection of the newest books; when they heard the fair Dinah playing at sight,

without making the smallest demur before seating herself at the piano, the idea they conceived of her

superiority assumed vast proportions. That she might never allow herself to become careless or the victim of

bad taste, Dinah had determined to keep herself up to the mark as to the fashions and latest developments of

luxury by an active correspondence with Anna Grossetete, her bosom friend at Mademoiselle Chamarolles'

Anna, thanks to a fine fortune, had married the Comte de Fontaine's third son. Thus those ladies who visited

at La Baudraye were perpetually piqued by Dinah's success in leading the fashion; do what they would, they

While all these trifles gave rise to malignant envy in the ladies of Sancerre, Dinah's conversation and wit

engendered absolute aversion. In her ambition to keep her mind on the level of Parisian brilliancy, Madame

de la Baudraye allowed no vacuous small talk in her presence, no oldfashioned compliments, no pointless

remarks; she would never endure the yelping of tittletattle, the backstairs slander which forms the staple of

talk in the country. She liked to hear of discoveries in science or art, or the latest pieces at the theatres, the

newest poems, and by airing the cant words of the day she made a show of uttering thoughts.

The Abbe Duret, Cure of Sancerre, an old man of a lost type of clergy in France, a man of the world with a

liking for cards, had not dared to indulge this taste in so liberal a district as Sancerre; he, therefore, was

delighted at Madame de la Baudraye's coming, and they got on together to admiration. The sousprefet, one

Vicomte de Chargeboeuf, was delighted to find in Madame de la Baudraye's drawing room a sort of oasis

where there was a truce to provincial life. As to Monsieur de Clagny, the Public Prosecutor, his admiration

for the fair Dinah kept him bound to Sancerre. The enthusiastic lawyer refused all promotion, and became a

quite pious adorer of this angel of grace and beauty. He was a tall, lean man, with a minatory countenance set

off by terrible eyes in deep black circles, under enormous eyebrows; and his eloquence, very unlike his

Monsieur Gravier was a little, round man, who in the days of the Empire had been a charming balladsinger;

it was this accomplishment that had won him the high position of PaymasterGeneral of the forces. Having

mixed himself up in certain important matters in Spain with generals at that time in opposition, he had made

the most of these connections to the Minister, who, in consideration of the place he had lost, promised him

the Receivership at Sancerre, and then allowed him to pay for the appointment. The frivolous spirit and light

tone of the Empire had become ponderous in Monsieur Gravier; he did not, or would not, understand the

wide difference between manners under the Restoration and under the Empire. Still, he conceived of himself

as far superior to Monsieur de Clagny; his style was in better taste; he followed the fashion, was to be seen in

a buff waistcoat, gray trousers, and neat, tightlyfitting coats; he wore a fashionable silk tie slipped through a

diamond ring, while the lawyer never dressed in anything but blackcoat, trousers, and waistcoat alike, and

These four men were the first to go into ecstasies over Dinah's cultivation, good taste, and refinement, and

pronounced her a woman of most superior mind. Then the women said to each other, "Madame de la

This view, which was more or less correct, kept them from visiting at La Baudraye. Dinah, attainted and

convicted of pedantry, because she spoke grammatically, was nicknamed the Sappho of SaintSatur. At last

everybody made insolent game of the great qualities of the woman who had thus roused the enmity of the

ladies of Sancerre. And they ended by denying a superiorityafter all, merely comparative!which

emphasized their ignorance, and did not forgive it. Where the whole population is hunchbacked, a straight

shape is the monstrosity; Dinah was regarded as monstrous and dangerous, and she found herself in a desert.

Astonished at seeing the women of the neighborhood only at long intervals, and for visits of a few minutes,

Monsieur Gravier, when questioned by the forlorn fair, only, after much entreaty, replied:

"Well, lady fair, you are not satisfied to be merely charming. You are clever and well educated, you know

every book that comes out, you love poetry, you are a musician, and you talk delightfully. Women cannot

"You who have such a Superior Woman for a wife are very fortunate" And at last he himself would say:

Madame Piedefer, flattered through her daughter, also allowed herself to say such things"My daughter,

who is a very Superior Woman, was writing yesterday to Madame de Fontaine such and such a thing."

Those who know the worldFrance, Parisknow how true it is that many celebrities are thus created.

Two years later, by the end of the year 1825, Dinah de la Baudraye was accused of not choosing to have any

visitors but men; then it was said that she did not care for womenand that was a crime. Not a thing could

she do, not her most trifling action, could escape criticism and misrepresentation. After making every

sacrifice that a wellbred woman can make, and placing herself entirely in the right, Madame de la Baudraye

This speech produced a terrible effect on Sancerre, and was cruelly retorted on the Sappho of SaintSatur

when, seeing her childless after five years of married life, little de la Baudraye became a byword for laughter.

To understand this provincial witticism, readers may be reminded of the Bailli de Ferrettesome, no doubt,

having known him of whom it was said that he was the bravest man in Europe for daring to walk on his

legs, and who was accused of putting lead in his shoes to save himself from being blown away. Monsieur de

la Baudraye, a sallow and almost diaphanous creature, would have been engaged by the Bailli de Ferrette as

first gentlemaninwaiting if that diplomatist had been the Grand Duke of Baden instead of being merely his

Monsieur de la Baudraye, whose legs were so thin that, for mere decency, he wore false calves, whose thighs

were like the arms of an average man, whose body was not unlike that of a cockchafer, would have been an

advantageous foil to the Bailli de Ferrette. As he walked, the little vineowner's legpads often twisted round

on to his shins, so little did he make a secret of them, and he would thank any one who warned him of this

little mishap. He wore kneebreeches, black silk stockings, and a white waistcoat till 1824. After his

marriage he adopted blue trousers and boots with heels, which made Sancerre declare that he had added two

inches to his stature that he might come up to his wife's chin. For ten years he was always seen in the same

little bottlegreen coat with large whitemetal buttons, and a black stock that accentuated his cold stingy

face, lighted up by grayblue eyes as keen and passionless as a cat's. Being very gentle, as men are who act

on a fixed plan of conduct, he seemed to make his wife happy by never contradicting her; he allowed her to

do the talking, and was satisfied to move with the deliberate tenacity of an insect.

Dinah, adored for her beauty, in which she had no rival, and admired for her cleverness by the most

gentlemanly men of the place, encouraged their admiration by conversations, for which it was subsequently

asserted, she prepared herself beforehand. Finding herself listened to with rapture, she soon began to listen to

herself, enjoyed haranguing her audience, and at last regarded her friends as the chorus in a tragedy, there

only to give her her cues. In fact, she had a very fine collection of phrases and ideas, derived either from

books or by assimilating the opinions of her companions, and thus became a sort of mechanical instrument,

going off on a round of phrases as soon as some chance remark released the spring. To do her justice, Dinah

was choke full of knowledge, and read everything, even medical books, statistics, science, and jurisprudence;

for she did not know how to spend her days when she had reviewed her flowerbeds and given her orders to

the gardener. Gifted with an excellent memory, and the talent which some women have for hitting on the

right word, she could talk on any subject with the lucidity of a studied style. And so men came from Cosne,

from la Charite, and from Nevers, on the right bank; from Lere, Vailly, Argent, Blancafort, and Aubigny, on

the left bank, to be introduced to Madame de la Baudraye, as they used in Switzerland, to be introduced to

Madame de Stael. Those who only once heard the round of tunes emitted by this musical snuffbox went

away amazed, and told such wonders of Dinah as made all the women jealous for ten leagues round.

There is an indescribable mental headiness in the admiration we inspire, or in the effect of playing a part,

which fends off criticism from reaching the idol. An atmosphere, produced perhaps by unceasing nervous

tension, forms a sort of halo, through which the world below is seen. How otherwise can we account for the

perennial good faith which leads to so many repeated presentments of the same effects, and the constant

ignoring of warnings given by children, such a terror to their parents, or by husbands, so familiar as they are

with the peacock airs of their wives? Monsieur de la Baudraye had the frankness of a man who opens an

umbrella at the first drop of rain. When his wife was started on the subject of Negro emancipation or the

improvement of convict prisons, he would take up his little blue cap and vanish without a sound, in the

certainty of being able to get to SaintThibault to see off a cargo of puncheons, and return an hour later to

find the discussion approaching a close. Or, if he had no business to attend to, he would go for a walk on the

Mall, whence he commanded the lovely panorama of the Loire valley, and take a draught of fresh air while

Once fairly established as a Superior Woman, Dinah was eager to prove her devotion to the most remarkable

creations of art. She threw herself into the propaganda of the romantic school, including, under Art, poetry

and painting, literature and sculpture, furniture and the opera. Thus she became a mediaevalist. She was also

interested in any treasures that dated from the Renaissance, and employed her allies as so many devoted

commission agents. Soon after she was married, she had become possessed of the Rougets' furniture, sold at

Issoudun early in 1824. She purchased some very good things at Nivernais and the Haute Loire. At the New

Year and on her birthday her friends never failed to give her some curiosities. These fancies found favor in

the eyes of Monsieur de la Baudraye; they gave him an appearance of sacrificing a few crowns to his wife's

taste. In point of fact, his land mania allowed him to think of nothing but the estate of Anzy.

These "antiquities" at that time cost much less than modern furniture. By the end of five or six years the

anteroom, the diningroom, the two drawingrooms, and the boudoir which Dinah had arranged on the

ground floor of La Baudraye, every spot even to the staircase, were crammed with masterpieces collected in

the four adjacent departments. These surroundings, which were called queer by the neighbors, were quite in

harmony with Dinah. All these Marvels, so soon to be the rage, struck the imagination of the strangers

introduced to her; they came expecting something unusual; and they found their expectations surpassed when,

behind a bower of flowers, they saw these catacombs full of old things, piled up as Sommerard used to pile

themthat "Old Mortality" of furniture. And then these finds served as so many springs which, turned on by

a question, played off an essay on Jean Goujon, Michel Columb, Germain Pilon, Boulle, Van Huysum, and

Boucher, the great native painter of Le Berry; on Clodion, the carver of wood, on Venetian mirrors, on

Brustolone, an Italian tenor who was the MichaelAngelo of boxwood and holm oak; on the thirteenth,

fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, on the glazes of Bernard de Palissy, the enamels of

Petitot, the engravings of Albrecht Durerwhom she called Dur; on illuminations on vellum, on Gothic

architecture, early decorated, flamboyant and pureenough to turn an old man's brain and fire a young man

Madame de la Baudraye, possessed with the idea of waking up Sancerre, tried to form a socalled literary

circle. The Presiding Judge, Monsieur Boirouge, who happened to have a house and garden on his hands, part

of the PopinotChandier property, favored the notion of this coterie. The wily Judge talked over the rules of

the society with Madame de la Baudraye; he proposed to figure as one of the founders, and to let the house

for fifteen years to the literary club. By the time it had existed a year the members were playing dominoes,

billiards, and bouillotte, and drinking mulled wine, punch, and liqueurs. A few elegant little suppers were

then given, and some masked balls during the Carnival. As to literaturethere were the newspapers. Politics

and business were discussed. Monsieur de la Baudraye was constantly thereon his wife's account, as she

This result deeply grieved the Superior Woman, who despaired of Sancerre, and collected the wit of the

neighborhood in her own drawingroom. Nevertheless, and in spite of the efforts of Messieurs de

Chargeboeuf, Gravier, and de Clagny, of the Abbe Duret and the two chief magistrates, of a young doctor,

and a young Assistant Judgeall blind admirers of Dinah'sthere were occasions when, weary of

discussion, they allowed themselves an excursion into the domain of agreeable frivolity which constitutes the

common basis of worldly conversation. Monsieur Gravier called this "from grave to gay." The Abbe Duret's

rubber made another pleasing variety on the monologues of the oracle. The three rivals, tired of keeping their

minds up to the level of the "high range of discussion"as they called their conversationbut not daring to

"We should lose too much by ceasing to listen to our inspired hostess!" and so he would incite Dinah's

This bold manoeuvre, a device of the Sousprefet's, was repeated with so much skill that Dinah never

suspected her slaves of escaping to the prison yard, so to speak, of the cardtable; and they would leave her

One young landowner, and the dandy of Sancerre, fell away from Dinah's good graces in consequence of

some rash demonstrations. After soliciting the honor of admission to this little circle, where he flattered

himself he could snatch the blossom from the constituted authorities who guarded it, he was so unfortunate as

to yawn in the middle of an explanation Dinah was favoring him withfor the fourth time, it is trueof the

philosophy of Kant. Monsieur de la Thaumassiere, the grandson of the historian of Le Berry, was thenceforth

The three devotees en titre each submitted to these exorbitant demands on their mind and attention, in hope of

a crowning triumph, when at last Dinah should become human; for neither of them was so bold as to imagine

that Dinah would give up her innocence as a wife till she should have lost all her illusions. In 1826, when she

was surrounded by adorers, Dinah completed her twentieth year, and the Abbe Duret kept her in a sort of

fervid Catholicism; so her worshipers had to be content to overwhelm her with little attentions and small

services, only too happy to be taken for the carpetknights of this sovereign lady, by strangers admitted to

"Madame de la Baudraye is a fruit that must be left to ripen." This was the opinion of Monsieur Gravier, who

As to the lawyer, he wrote letters four pages long, to which Dinah replied in soothing speech as she walked,

Madame de la Baudraye, thus guarded by three passions, and always under the eye of her pious mother,

escaped the malignity of slander. It was so evident to all Sancerre that no two of these three men would ever

leave the third alone with Madame de la Baudraye, that their jealousy was a comedy to the lookerson.

To reach SaintThibault from Caesar's Gate there is a way much shorter than that by the ramparts, down

what is known in mountainous districts as a coursiere, called at Sancerre le Cassecou, or Breakneck Alley.

The name is significant as applied to a path down the steepest part of the hillside, thickly strewn with stones,

and shut in by the high banks of the vineyards on each side. By way of the Breakneck the distance from

Sancerre to La Baudraye is much abridged. The ladies of the place, jealous of the Sappho of SaintSatur,

were wont to walk on the Mall, looking down this Longchamp of the bigwigs, whom they would stop and

engage in conversationsometimes the Sousprefet and sometimes the Public Prosecutorand who would

listen with every sign of impatience or uncivil absence of mind. As the turrets of La Baudraye are visible

from the Mall, many a younger man came to contemplate the abode of Dinah while envying the ten or twelve

privileged persons who might spend their afternoons with the Queen of the neighborhood.

Monsieur de la Baudraye was not slow to discover the advantage he, as Dinah's husband, held over his wife's

adorers, and he made use of them without any disguise, obtaining a remission of taxes, and gaining two

lawsuits. In every litigation he used the Public Prosecutor's name with such good effect that the matter was

carried no further, and, like all undersized men, he was contentious and litigious in business, though in the

At the same time, the more certainly guiltless she was, the less conceivable did Madame de la Baudraye's

position seem to the prying eyes of these women. Frequently, at the house of the Presidente de Boirouge, the

ladies of a certain age would spend a whole evening discussing the La Baudraye household, among

themselves of course. They all had suspicions of a mystery, a secret such as always interests women who

have had some experience of life. And, in fact, at La Baudraye one of those slow and monotonous conjugal

tragedies was being played out which would have remained for ever unknown if the merciless scalpel of the

nineteenth century, guided by the insistent demand for novelty, had not dissected the darkest corners of the

heart, or at any rate those which the decency of past centuries left unopened. And that domestic drama

sufficiently accounts for Dinah's immaculate virtue during her early married life.

A young lady, whose triumphs at school had been the outcome of her pride, and whose first scheme in life

had been rewarded by a victory, was not likely to pause in such a brilliant career. Frail as Monsieur de la

Baudraye might seem, he was really an unhopedfor good match for Mademoiselle Dinah Piedefer. But what

was the hidden motive of this country landowner when, at fortyfour, he married a girl of seventeen; and

what could his wife make out of the bargain? This was the text of Dinah's first meditations.

The little man never behaved quite as his wife expected. To begin with, he allowed her to take the five

precious acres now wasted in pleasure grounds round La Baudraye, and paid, almost with generosity, the

seven or eight thousand francs required by Dinah for improvements in the house, enabling her to buy the

furniture at the Rougets' sale at Issoudun, and to redecorate her rooms in various stylesMediaeval, Louis

XIV., and Pompadour. The young wife found it difficult to believe that Monsieur de la Baudraye was so

miserly as he was reputed, or else she must have great influence with him. The illusion lasted a year and a

After Monsieur de la Baudraye's second journey to Paris, Dinah discovered in him the Artic coldness of a

provincial miser whenever money was in question. The first time she asked for supplies she played the

sweetest of the comedies of which Eve invented the secret; but the little man put it plainly to his wife that he

gave her two hundred francs a month for her personal expenses, and paid Madame Piedefer twelve hundred

francs a year as a charge on the lands of La Hautoy, and that this was two hundred francs a year more than

"I say nothing of the cost of housekeeping," he said in conclusion. "You may give your friends cake and tea

in the evening, for you must have some amusement. But I, who spent but fifteen hundred francs a year as a

bachelor, now spend six thousand, including rates and repairs, and this is rather too much in relation to the

nature of our property. A winegrower is never sure of what his expenses may bethe making, the duty, the

caskswhile the returns depend on a scorching day or a sudden frost. Small owners, like us, whose income

is far from being fixed, must base their estimates on their minimum, for they have no means of making up a

deficit or a loss. What would become of us if a wine merchant became bankrupt? In my opinion, promissory

notes are so many cabbageleaves. To live as we are living, we ought always to have a year's income in hand

Any form of resistance is enough to make a woman vow to subdue it; Dinah flung herself against a will of

iron padded round with gentleness. She tried to fill the little man's soul with jealousy and alarms, but it was

stockaded with insolent confidence. He left Dinah, when he went to Paris, with all the conviction of Medor in

Angelique's fidelity. When she affected cold disdain, to nettle this changeling by the scorn a courtesan

sometimes shows to her "protector," and which acts on him with the certainty of the screw of a winepress,

Monsieur de la Baudraye gazed at his wife with fixed eyes, like those of a cat which, in the midst of domestic

broils, waits till a blow is threatened before stirring from its place. The strange, speechless uneasiness that

was perceptible under his mute indifference almost terrified the young wife of twenty; she could not at first

understand the selfish quiescence of this man, who might be compared to a cracked pot, and who, in order to

live, regulated his existence with the unchangeable regularity which a clockmaker requires of a clock. So the

little man always evaded his wife, while she always hit out, as it were, ten feet above his head.

Dinah's fits of fury when she saw herself condemned never to escape from La Baudraye and Sancerre are

more easily imagined than described she who had dreamed of handling a fortune and managing the dwarf

whom she, the giant, had at first humored in order to command. In the hope of some day making her

appearance on the greater stage of Paris, she accepted the vulgar incense of her attendant knights with a view

to seeing Monsieur de la Baudraye's name drawn from the electoral urn; for she supposed him to be

ambitious, after seeing him return thrice from Paris, each time a step higher on the social ladder. But when

she struck on the man's heart, it was as though she had tapped on marble! The man who had been

ReceiverGeneral and Referendary, who was now Master of Appeals, Officer of the Legion of Honor, and

Royal Commissioner, was but a mole throwing up its little hills round and round a vineyard! Then some

lamentations were poured into the heart of the Public Prosecutor, of the Sousprefet, even of Monsieur

Gravier, and they all increased in their devotion to this sublime victim; for, like all women, she never

mentioned her speculative schemes, and again like all womenfinding such speculation vain, she ceased

Dinah, tossed by mental storms, was still undecided when, in the autumn of 1827, the news was told of the

purchase by the Baron de la Baudraye of the estate of Anzy. Then the little old man showed an impulsion of

pride and glee which for a few months changed the current of his wife's ideas; she fancied there was a hidden

vein of greatness in the man when she found him applying for a patent of entail. In his triumph the Baron

There was then a patchedup reunion between the husband and wife, such as can never endure, and which

only humiliated and fatigued a woman whose apparent superiority was unreal, while her unseen superiority

was genuine. This whimsical medley is commoner than people think. Dinah, who was ridiculous from the

perversity of her cleverness, had really great qualities of soul, but circumstances did not bring these rarer

powers to light, while a provincial life debased the small change of her wit from day to day. Monsieur de la

Baudraye, on the contrary, devoid of soul, of strength, and of wit, was fated to figure as a man of character,

There was in their lives a first phase, lasting six years, during which Dinah, alas! became utterly provincial.

In Paris there are several kinds of women: the duchess and the financier's wife, the ambassadress and the

consul's wife, the wife of the minister who is a minister, and of him who is no longer a minister; then there is

the ladyquite the ladyof the right bank of the Seine and of the left. But in the country there is but one

This remark points to one of the sores of modern society. It must be clearly understood: France in the

nineteenth century is divided into two broad zonesParis, and the provinces. The provinces jealous of Paris;

Paris never thinking of the provinces but to demand money. Of old, Paris was the Capital of the provinces,

and the court ruled the Capital; now, all Paris is the Court, and all the country is the town.

However lofty, beautiful, and clever a girl born in any department of France may be on entering life, if, like

Dinah Piedefer, she marries in the country and remains there, she inevitably becomes the provincial woman.

In spite of every determination, the commonplace of secondrate ideas, indifference to dress, the culture of

vulgar people, swamp the sublimer essence hidden in the youthful plant; all is over, it falls into decay. How

should it be otherwise? From their earliest years girls bred in the country see none but provincials; they

cannot imagine anything superior, their choice lies among mediocrities; provincial fathers marry their

daughters to provincial sons; crossing the races is never thought of, and the brain inevitably degenerates, so

that in many country towns intellect is as rare as the breed is hideous. Mankind becomes dwarfed in mind and

body, for the fatal principle of conformity of fortune governs every matrimonial alliance. Men of talent,

artists, superior brainsevery bird of brilliant plumage flies to Paris. The provincial woman, inferior in

herself, is also inferior through her husband. How is she to live happy under this crushing twofold

But there is a third and terrible element besides her congenital and conjugal inferiority which contributes to

make the figure arid and gloomy; to reduce it, narrow it, distort it fatally. Is not one of the most flattering

unctions a woman can lay to her soul the assurance of being something in the existence of a superior man,

chosen by herself, wittingly, as if to have some revenge on marriage, wherein her tastes were so little

consulted? But if in the country the husbands are inferior beings, the bachelors are no less so. When a

provincial wife commits her "little sin," she falls in love with some socalled handsome native, some

indigenous dandy, a youth who wears gloves and is supposed to ride well; but she knows at the bottom of her

soul that her fancy is in pursuit of the commonplace, more or less well dressed. Dinah was preserved from

this danger by the idea impressed upon her of her own superiority. Even if she had not been as carefully

guarded in her early married life as she was by her mother, whose presence never weighed upon her till the

day when she wanted to be rid of it, her pride, and her high sense of her own destinies, would have protected

her. Flattered as she was to find herself surrounded by admirers, she saw no lover among them. No man here

realized the poetical ideal which she and Anna Grossetete had been wont to sketch. When, stirred by the

involuntary temptations suggested by the homage she received, she asked herself, "If I had to make a choice,

who should it be?" she owned to a preference for Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, a gentleman of good family,

whose appearance and manners she liked, but whose cold nature, selfishness, and narrow ambition, never

rising above a prefecture and a good marriage, repelled her. At a word from his family, who were alarmed

lest he should be killed for an intrigue, the Vicomte had already deserted a woman he had loved in the town

Monsieur de Clagny, on the other hand, the only man whose mind appealed to hers, whose ambition was

founded on love, and who knew what love means, Dinah thought perfectly odious. When Dinah saw herself

condemned to six years' residence at Sancerre she was on the point of accepting the devotion of Monsieur le

Vicomte de Chargeboeuf; but he was appointed to a prefecture and left the district. To Monsieur de Clagny's

great satisfaction, the new Sousprefet was a married man whose wife made friends with Dinah. The lawyer

had now no rival to fear but Monsieur Gravier. Now Monsieur Gravier was the typical man of forty of whom

women make use while they laugh at him, whose hopes they intentionally and remorselessly encourage, as

we are kind to a beast of burden. In six years, among all the men who were introduced to her from twenty

leagues round, there was not one in whose presence Dinah was conscious of the excitement caused by

personal beauty, by a belief in promised happiness, by the impact of a superior soul, or the anticipation of a

Thus none of Dinah's choicest faculties had a chance of developing; she swallowed many insults to her pride,

which was constantly suffering under the husband who so calmly walked the stage as supernumerary in the

drama of her life. Compelled to bury her wealth of love, she showed only the surface to the world. Now and

then she would try to rouse herself, try to form some manly resolution; but she was kept in leading strings by

the need for money. And so, slowly and in spite of the ambitious protests and grievous recriminations of her

own mind, she underwent the provincial metamorphosis here described. Each day took with it a fragment of

her spirited determination. She had laid down a rule for the care of her person, which she gradually departed

from. Though at first she kept up with the fashions and the little novelties of elegant life, she was obliged to

limit her purchases by the amount of her allowance. Instead of six hats, caps, or gowns, she resigned herself

to one gown each season. She was so much admired in a certain bonnet that she made it do duty for two

Not unfrequently her artistic sense led her to sacrifice the requirements of her person to secure some bit of

Gothic furniture. By the seventh year she had come so low as to think it convenient to have her morning

dresses made at home by the best needlewoman in the neighborhood; and her mother, her husband, and her

friends pronounced her charming in these inexpensive costumes which did credit to her taste. Her ideas were

imitated! As she had no standard of comparison, Dinah fell into the snares that surround the provincial

woman. If a Parisian woman's hips are too narrow or too full, her inventive wit and the desire to please help

to find some heroic remedy; if she has some defect, some ugly spot, or small disfigurement, she is capable of

making it an adornment; this is often seen; but the provincial woman never! If her waist is too short and

her figure ill balanced, well, she makes up her mind to the worst, and her adorersor they do not adore

hermust take her as she is, while the Parisian always insists on being taken for what she is not. Hence the

preposterous bustles, the audacious flatness, the ridiculous fulness, the hideous outlines ingeniously

displayed, to which a whole town will become accustomed, but which are so astounding when a provincial

woman makes her appearance in Paris or among Parisians. Dinah, who was extremely slim, showed it off to

excess, and never knew a dull moment when it became ridiculous; when, reduced by the dull weariness of her

life, she looked like a skeleton in clothes; and her friends, seeing her every day, did not observe the gradual

This is one of the natural results of a provincial life. In spite of marriage, a young woman preserves her

beauty for some time, and the town is proud of her; but everybody sees her every day, and when people meet

every day their perception is dulled. If, like Madame de la Baudraye, she loses her color, it is scarcely

noticed; or, again, if she flushes a little, that is intelligible and interesting. A little neglect is thought

charming, and her face is so carefully studied, so well known, that slight changes are scarcely noticed, and

regarded at last as "beauty spots." When Dinah ceased to have a new dress with a new season, she seemed to

It is the same with matters of speech, choice of words and ideas, as it is with matters of feeling. The mind can

rust as well as the body if it is not rubbed up in Paris; but the thing on which provincialism most sets its

stamp is gesture, gait, and movement; these soon lose the briskness which Paris constantly keeps alive. The

provincial is used to walk and move in a world devoid of accident or change, there is nothing to be avoided;

so in Paris she walks on as raw recruits do, never remembering that there may be hindrances, for there are

none in her way in her native place, where she is known, where she is always in her place, and every one

And have you ever noticed the effect on human beings of a life in common? By the ineffaceable instinct of

simian mimicry they all tend to copy each other. Each one, without knowing it, acquires the gestures, the tone

of voice, the manner, the attitudes, the very countenance of others. In six years Dinah had sunk to the pitch of

the society she lived in. As she acquired Monsieur de Clagny's ideas she assumed his tone of voice; she

unconsciously fell into masculine manners from seeing none but men; she fancied that by laughing at what

was ridiculous in them she was safe from catching it; but, as often happens, some hue of what she laughed at

A Parisian woman sees so many examples of good taste that a contrary result ensues. In Paris women learn to

seize the hour and moment when they may appear to advantage; while Madame de la Baudraye, accustomed

to take the stage, acquired an indefinable theatrical and domineering manner, the air of a prima donna coming

forward on the boards, of which ironical smiles would soon have cured her in the capital.

But after she had acquired this stock of absurdities, and, deceived by her worshipers, imagined them to be

added graces, a moment of terrible awakening came upon her like the fall of an avalanche from a mountain.

In 1829, after the departure of Monsieur de Chargeboeuf, she was excited by the anticipation of a little

pleasure; she was expecting the Baronne de Fontaine. Anna's husband, who was now DirectorGeneral under

the Minister of Finance, took advantage of leave of absence on the occasion of his father's death to take his

wife to Italy. Anna wished to spend the day at Sancerre with her schoolfriend. This meeting was strangely

disastrous. Anna, who at school had been far less handsome than Dinah, now, as Baronne de Fontaine, was a

thousand times handsomer than the Baronne de la Baudraye, in spite of her fatigue and her traveling dress.

Anna stepped out of an elegant traveling chaise loaded with Paris milliners' boxes, and she had with her a

lady's maid, whose airs quite frightened Dinah. All the difference between a woman of Paris and a provincial

was at once evident to Dinah's intelligent eye; she saw herself as her friend saw herand Anna found her

altered beyond recognition. Anna spent six thousand francs a year on herself alone, as much as kept the

In twentyfour hours the friends had exchanged many confidences; and the Parisian, seeing herself so far

superior to the phoenix of Mademoiselle Chamarolles' school, showed her provincial friend such kindness,

such attentions, while giving her certain explanations, as were so many stabs to Dinah, though she perfectly

understood that Anna's advantages all lay on the surface, while her own were for ever buried.

When Anna had left, Madame de la Baudraye, by this time twoand twenty, fell into the depths of despair.

A tragicomedy was, in fact, being enacted in Madame de la Baudraye's house, in harmony with her

struggles over money matters and her successive transformationsa drama to which no one but Monsieur de

Clagny and the Abbe Duret ever knew the clue, when Dinah in sheer idleness, or perhaps sheer vanity,

Though a mixture of verse and prose is a monstrous anomaly in French literature, there must be exceptions to

the rule. This tale will be one of the two instances in these Studies of violation of the laws of narrative; for to

give a just idea of the unconfessed struggle which may excuse, though it cannot absolve Dinah, it is necessary

Her patience and her resignation alike broken by the departure of the Vicomte de Chargeboeuf, Dinah took

the worthy Abbe's advice to exhale her evil thoughts in versea proceeding which perhaps accounts for

"You will find such relief as those who write epitaphs or elegies over those whom they have lost. Pain is

This strange production caused a great ferment in the departments of the Allier, the Nievre, and the Cher,

proud to possess a poet capable of rivalry with the glories of Paris. Paquita la Sevillane, by Jan Diaz, was

published in the Echo du Morvan, a review which for eighteen months maintained its existence in spite of

provincial indifference. Some knowing persons at Nevers declared that Jan Diaz was making fun of the new

school, just then bringing out its eccentric verse, full of vitality and imagery, and of brilliant effects produced

by defying the Muse under pretext of adapting German, English, and Romanesque mannerisms.

Ah! if you knew the fragrant plain, The air, the sky, of golden Spain, Its fervid noons, its balmy spring, Sad

daughters of the northern gloom, Of love, of heav'n, of native home, You never would presume to sing!

For men are there of other mould Than those who live in this dull cold. And there to music low and sweet

Sevillian maids, from eve till dawn, Dance lightly on the moonlit lawn In satin shoes, on dainty feet.

Ah, you would be the first to blush Over your dancers' romp and rush, And your too hideous carnival, That

turns your cheeks all chill and blue, And skips the mud in hobnail'd shoe A truly dismal festival.

To palefaced girls, and in a squalid room, Paquita sang; the murky town beneath Was Rouen whence the

slender spires rise To chew the storm with teeth. Rouen so hideous, noisy, full of rage

And here followed a magnificent description of Rouenwhere Dinah had never beenwritten with the

affected brutality which, a little later, inspired so many imitations of Juvenal; a contrast drawn between the

life of a manufacturing town and the careless life of Spain, between the love of Heaven and of human beauty,

Seville, you see, had been her native home, Seville, where skies are blue and evening sweet. She, at thirteen,

For her three Toreadors had gone to death Or victory, the prize to be a kiss One kiss from those red lips of

The features of the Spanish girl's portrait have served so often as those of the courtesan in so many

selfstyled poems, that it would be tiresome to quote here the hundred lines of description. To judge of the

lengths to which audacity had carried Dinah, it will be enough to give the conclusion. According to Madame

de la Baudraye's ardent pen, Paquita was so entirely created for love that she can hardly have met with a

. . . . In her passionate fire Every man would have swooned from the heat, When she at love's feast, in her

"And yet she could quit the joys of Seville, its woods and fields of orangetrees, for a Norman soldier who

won her love and carried her away to his hearth and home. She did not weep for her Andalusia, the Soldier

was her whole joy. . . . But the day came when he was compelled to start for Russia in the footsteps of the

Nothing could be more dainty than the description of the parting between the Spanish girl and the Normandy

Captain of Artillery, who, in the delirium of passion expressed with feeling worthy of Byron, exacted from

Paquita a vow of absolute fidelity, in the Cathedral at Rouen in front of the alter of the Blessed Virgin, who

Though a Maid is a woman, and never forgives When lovers are false to their vows.

A large part of the poem was devoted to describing Paquita's sufferings when alone in Rouen waiting till the

campaign was over; she stood writhing at the window bars as she watched happy couples go by; she

suppressed her passion in her heart with a determination that consumed her; she lived on narcotics, and

Almost she died, but still her heart was true; And when at last her soldier came again, He found her beauty

"But he, pale and frozen by the cold of Russia, chilled to the very marrow, met his yearning fair one with a

The whole poem was written up to this situation, which was worked out with such vigor and boldness as too

Paquita, on reaching the limits set to real love, did not, like Julie and Heloise, throw herself into the ideal; no,

she rushed into the paths of vice, which is, no doubt, shockingly natural; but she did it without any touch of

magnificence, for lack of means, as it would be difficult to find in Rouen men impassioned enough to place

Paquita in a suitable setting of luxury and splendor. This horrible realism, emphasized by gloomy poetic

feeling, had inspired some passages such as modern poetry is too free with, rather too like the flayed

anatomical figures known to artists as ecorches. Then, by a highly philosophical revulsion, after describing

the house of illfame where the Andalusian ended her days, the writer came back to the ballad at the opening:

The gloomy vigor of this poem, running to about six hundred lines, and serving as a powerful foil, to use a

painter's word, to the two seguidillas at the beginning and end, the masculine utterance of inexpressible grief,

alarmed the woman who found herself admired by three departments, under the black cloak of the

anonymous. While she fully enjoyed the intoxicating delights of success, Dinah dreaded the malignity of

provincial society, where more than one woman, if the secret should slip out, would certainly find points of

resemblance between the writer and Paquita. Reflection came too late; Dinah shuddered with shame at having

"Write no more," said the Abbe Duret. "You will cease to be a woman; you will be a poet."

Moulins, Nevers, Bourges were searched to find Jan Diaz; but Dinah was impenetrable. To remove any evil

impression, in case any unforeseen chance should betray her name, she wrote a charming poem in two cantos

"Once upon a time the folks of Nevers and the folks of SaintSaulge, at war with each other, came at

daybreak to fight a battle, in which one or other should perish, and met in the forest of Faye. And then there

stood between them, under an oak, a priest whose aspect in the morning sun was so commanding that the foes

at his bidding heard Mass as he performed it under the oak, and at the words of the Gospel they made

After these two attempts Madame de la Baudraye, feeling herself a poet, had a light on her brow and a flash

in her eyes that made her handsomer than ever. She cast longing looks at Paris, aspiring to fame and fell

back into her den of La Baudraye, her daily squabbles with her husband, and her little circle, where

everybody's character, intentions, and remarks were too well known not to have become a bore. Though she

found relief from her dreary life in literary work, and poetry echoed loudly in her empty life, though she thus

found an outlet for her energies, literature increased her hatred of the gray and ponderous provincial

When, after the Revolution of 1830, the glory of George Sand was reflected on Le Berry, many a town

envied La Chatre the privilege of having given birth to this rival of Madame de Stael and Camille Maupin,

and were ready to do homage to minor feminine talent. Thus there arose in France a vast number of tenth

Muses, young girls or young wives tempted from a silent life by the bait of glory. Very strange doctrines

were proclaimed as to the part women should play in society. Though the sound common sense which lies at

the root of the French nature was not perverted, women were suffered to express ideas and profess opinions

Monsieur de Clagny took advantage of this outbreak of freedom to collect the works of Jan Diaz in a small

volume printed by Desroziers at Moulins. He wrote a little notice of the author, too early snatched from the

world of letters, which was amusing to those who were in the secret, but which even then had not the merit of

novelty. Such practical jokes, capital so long as the author remains unknown, fall rather flat if subsequently

From this point of view, however, the memoir of Jan Diaz, born at Bourges in 1807, the son of a Spanish

prisoner, may very likely some day deceive the compiler of some Universal Biography. Nothing is

overlooked; neither the names of the professors at the Bourges College, nor those of his deceased

schoolfellows, such as Lousteau, Bianchon, and other famous natives of the province, who, it is said, knew

the dreamy, melancholy boy, and his precocious bent towards poetry. An elegy called

Tristesse (Melancholy), written at school; the two poems Paquita la Sevillane and Le Chene de la Messe;

three sonnets, a description of the Cathedral and the House of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, with a tale called

Carola, published as the work he was engaged on at the time of his death, constituted the whole of these

literary remains; and the poet's last hours, full of misery and despair, could not fail to wring the hearts of the

feeling public of the Nievre, the Bourbonnais, the Cher, and the Morvan, where he died near

Of this little yellow paper volume two hundred copies were printed; one hundred and fifty were soldabout

fifty in each department. This average of tender and poetic souls in three departments of France is enough to

revive the enthusiasm of writers as to the Furia Francese, which nowadays is more apt to expend itself in

When Monsieur de Clagny had given away a certain number of copies, Dinah still had seven or eight,

wrapped up in the newspapers which had published notices of the work. Twenty copies forwarded to the

Paris papers were swamped in the editors' offices. Nathan was taken in as well as several of his

fellowcountrymen of Le Berry, and wrote an article on the great man, in which he credited him with all the

Lousteau, warned by his fellowschoolfellows, who could not remember Jan Diaz, waited for information

Then, in and around Sancerre, Madame de la Baudraye became the rage; she was the future rival of George

Sand. From Sancerre to Bourges a poem was praised which, at any other time, would certainly have been

hooted. The provincial publiclike every French public, perhapsdoes not share the love of the King of the

By this time the good Abbe, Madame de la Baudraye's counselor, was dead; he would certainly have

prevented her rushing into public life. But three years of work without recognition weighed on Dinah's soul,

and she accepted the clatter of fame as a substitute for her disappointed ambitions. Poetry and dreams of

celebrity, which had lulled her grief since her meeting with Anna Grossetete, no longer sufficed to exhaust

the activity of her morbid heart. The Abbe Duret, who had talked of the world when the voice of religion was

impotent, who understood Dinah, and promised her a happy future by assuring her that God would

compensate her for her sufferings bravely endured, this good old man could no longer stand between the

The wise old priest had more than once endeavored to enlighten Dinah as to her husband's character, telling

her that the man could hate; but women are not ready to believe in such force in weak natures, and hatred is

too constantly in action not to be a vital force. Dinah, finding her husband incapable of love, denied him the

"Do not confound hatred and vengeance," said the Abbe. "They are two different sentiments. One is the

instinct of small minds; the other is the outcome of law which great souls obey. God is avenged, but He does

not hate. Hatred is a vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their meanness, and make it a pretext for sordid

tyranny. So beware of offending Monsieur de la Baudraye; he would forgive an infidelity, because he could

make capital of it, but he would be doubly implacable if you should touch him on the spot so cruelly

Now, at the time when the whole countrysideNevers and Sancerre, Le Morvan and Le Berrywas priding

itself on Madame de la Baudraye, and lauding her under the name of Jan Diaz, "little La Baudraye" felt her

glory a mortal blow. He alone knew the secret source of Paquita la Sevillane. When this terrible work was

The women rejoiced in being able to pity her who had so long oppressed them; never had Dinah seemed to

The shriveled old man, more wrinkled, yellower, feebler than ever, gave no sign; but Dinah sometimes

detected in his eyes, as he looked at her, a sort of icy venom which gave the lie to his increased politeness and

gentleness. She understood at last that this was not, as she had supposed, a mere domestic squabble; but when

she forced an explanation with her "insect," as Monsieur Gravier called him, she found the cold, hard

impassibility of steel. She flew into a passion; she reproached him for her life these eleven years past; she

made intentionallywhat women call a scene. But "little La Baudraye" sat in an armchair with his eyes

shut, and listened phlegmatically to the storm. And, as usual, the dwarf got the better of his wife. Dinah saw

that she had done wrong in writing; she vowed never to write another line, and she kept her vow.

"Why did not Madame de la Baudraye compose any more verses?" was the universal cry.

At this time Madame de la Baudraye had no enemies; every one rushed to see her, not a week passed without

fresh introductions. The wife of the presiding judge, an august bourgeoise, nee PopinotChandier, desired her

son, a youth of twoandtwenty, to pay his humble respects to La Baudraye, and flattered herself that she

might see her Gatien in the good graces of this Superior Woman.The words Superior Woman had

superseded the absurd nickname of The Sappho of SaintSatur.This lady, who for nine years had led the

opposition, was so delighted at the good reception accorded to her son, that she became loud in her praises of

"After all," she exclaimed, in reply to a tirade from Madame de Clagny, who hated her husband's supposed

After scrambling through so many brambles and setting off on so many different roads, after dreaming of

love in splendor and scenting the darkest dramas, thinking such terrible joys would be cheaply purchased so

weary was she of her dreary existence, one day Dinah fell into the pit she had sworn to avoid. Seeing

Monsieur de Clagny always sacrificing himself, and at last refusing a high appointment in Paris, where his

family wanted to see him, she said to herself, "He loves me!" She vanquished her repulsion, and seemed

It was to this impulse of generosity on her part that a coalition was due, formed in Sancerre to secure the

return of Monsieur de Clagny at the next elections. Madame de la Baudraye had dreamed of going to Paris in

But, in spite of the most solemn promises, the hundred and fifty votes to be recorded in favor of this adorer of

the lovely Dinahwho hoped to see this defender of the widow and the orphan wearing the gown of the

Keeper of the Sealsfigured as an imposing minority of fifty votes. The jealousy of the President de

Boirouge, and Monsieur Gravier's hatred, for he believed in the candidate's supremacy in Dinah's heart, had

been worked upon by a young Sousprefet; and for this worthy deed the allies got the young man made a

"I shall never cease to regret," said he, as he quitted Sancerre, "that I did not succeed in pleasing Madame de

The household that was thus racked by domestic troubles was calm on the surface; here were two illassorted

but resigned beings, and the indescribable propriety, the lie that society insists on, and which to Dinah was an

unendurable yoke. Why did she long to throw off the mask she had worn for twelve years? Whence this

The reader who has noted all the phases of her existence will have understood the various illusions by which

Dinah, like many another woman, had been deceived. After an attempt to master Monsieur de la Baudraye,

she had indulged the hope of becoming a mother. Between those miserable disputes over household matters

and the melancholy conviction as to her fate, quite a long time had elapsed. Then, when she had looked for

consolation, the consoler, Monsieur de Chargeboeuf had left her. Thus, the overwhelming temptation which

commonly causes women to sin had hitherto been absent. For if there are, after all, some women who make

straight for unfaithfulness, are there not many more who cling to hope, and do not fall till they have wandered

Such was Dinah. She had so little impulse to fail in her duty, that she did not care enough for Monsieur de

Then the move to the Chateau d'Anzy, the rearrangement of her collected treasures and curiosities, which

derived added value from the splendid setting which Philibert de Lorme seemed to have planned on purpose

for this museum, occupied her for several months, giving her leisure to meditate one of those decisive steps

that startle the public, ignorant of the motives which, however, it sometimes discovers by dint of gossip and

Madame de la Baudraye had been greatly struck by the reputation of Lousteau, who was regarded as a lady's

man of the first water in consequence of his intimacies among actresses; she was anxious to know him; she

read his books, and was fired with enthusiasm, less perhaps for his talents than for his successes with women;

and to attract him to the country, she started the notion that it was obligatory on Sancerre to return one of its

great men at the elections. She made Gatien Boirouge write to the great physician Bianchon, whom he

claimed as a cousin through the Popinots. Then she persuaded an old friend of the departed Madame

Lousteau to stir up the journalist's ambitions by letting him know that certain persons in Sancerre were firmly

Tired of her commonplace neighbors, Madame de la Baudraye would thus at last meet really illustrious men,

Neither Lousteau nor Bianchon replied; they were waiting perhaps till the holidays. Bianchon, who had won

his professor's chair the year before after a brilliant contest, could not leave his lectures.

In the month of September, when the vintage was at its height, the two Parisians arrived in their native

province, and found it absorbed in the unremitting toil of the winecrop of 1836; there could therefore be no

public demonstration in their favor. "We have fallen flat," said Lousteau to his companion, in the slang of the

In 1836, Lousteau, worn by sixteen years of struggle in the Capital, and aged quite as much by pleasure as by

penury, hard work, and disappointments, looked eightandforty, though he was no more than thirtyseven.

He was already bald, and had assumed a Byronic air in harmony with his early decay and the lines furrowed

in his face by overindulgence in champagne. He ascribed these signsmanual of dissipation to the severities

of a literary life, declaring that the Press was murderous; and he gave it to be understood that it consumed

superior talents, so as to lend a grace to his exhaustion. In his native town he thought proper to exaggerate his

affected contempt of life and his spurious misanthropy. Still, his eyes could flash with fire like a volcano

supposed to be extinct, and he endeavored, by dressing fashionably, to make up for the lack of youth that

Horace Bianchon, who wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, was fat and burly, as beseems a fashionable

physician, with a patriarchal air, his hair thick and long, a prominent brow, the frame of a hard worker, and

the calm expression of a philosopher. This somewhat prosaic personality set off his more frivolous

The two great men remained unrecognized during a whole morning at the inn where they had put up, and it

was only by chance that Monsieur de Clagny heard of their arrival. Madame de la Baudraye, in despair at

this, despatched Gatien Boirouge, who had no vineyards, to beg the two gentlemen to spend a few days at the

Chateau d'Anzy. For the last year Dinah had played the chatelaine, and spent the winter only at La Baudraye.

Monsieur Gravier, the Public Prosecutor, the Presiding Judge, and Gatien Boirouge combined to give a

On hearing that the beautiful Madame de la Baudraye was Jan Diaz, the Parisians went to spend three days at

Anzy, fetched in a sort of wagonette driven by Gatien himself. The young man, under a genuine illusion,

spoke of Madame de la Baudraye not only as the handsomest woman in those parts, a woman so superior that

she might give George Sand a qualm, but as a woman who would produce a great sensation in Paris. Hence

the extreme though suppressed astonishment of Doctor Bianchon and the waggish journalist when they

beheld, on the garden steps of Anzy, a lady dressed in thin black cashmere with a deep tucker, in effect like a

ridinghabit cut short, for they quite understood the pretentiousness of such extreme simplicity. Dinah also

wore a black velvet cap, like that in the portrait of Raphael, and below it her hair fell in thick curls. This attire

showed off a rather pretty figure, fine eyes, and handsome eyelids somewhat faded by the weariful life that

has been described. In Le Berry the singularity of this artistic costume was a cloak for the romantic

On seeing the affectations of their too amiable hostesswhich were, indeed, affectations of soul and

mindthe friends glanced at each other, and put on a deeply serious expression to listen to Madame de la

Baudraye, who made them a set speech of thanks for coming to cheer the monotony of her days. Dinah

walked her guests round and round the lawn, ornamented with large vases of flowers, which lay in front of

"How is it," said Lousteau, the practical joker, "that so handsome a woman as you, and apparently so

superior, should have remained buried in the country? What do you do to make life endurable?"

"Ah! that is the crux," said the lady. "It is unendurable. Utter despair or dull resignationthere is no third

alternative; that is the arid soil in which our existence is rooted, and on which a thousand stagnant ideas fall;

they cannot fertilize the ground, but they supply food for the etiolated flowers of our desert souls. Never

believe in indifference! Indifference is either despair or resignation. Then each woman takes up the pursuit

which, according to her character, seems to promise some amusement. Some rush into jam making and

washing, household management, the rural joys of the vintage or the harvest, bottling fruit, embroidering

handkerchiefs, the cares of motherhood, the intrigues of a country town. Others torment a muchenduring

piano, which, at the end of seven years, sounds like an old kettle, and ends its asthmatic life at the Chateau

d'Anzy. Some pious dames talk over the different brands of the Word of Godthe Abbe Fritaud as compared

with the Abbe Guinard. They play cards in the evening, dance with the same partners for twelve years

running, in the same rooms, at the same dates. This delightful life is varied by solemn walks on the Mall,

visits of politeness among the women, who ask each other where they bought their gowns.

"Conversation is bounded on the south by remarks on the intrigues lying hidden under the stagnant water of

provincial life, on the north by proposed marriages, on the west by jealousies, and on the east by sour

"And so," she went on, striking an attitude, "you see a woman wrinkled at nineandtwenty, ten years before

the time fixed by the rules of Doctor Bianchon, a woman whose skin is ruined at an early age, who turns as

yellow as a quince when she is yellow at allwe have seen some turn green. When we have reached that

point, we try to justify our normal condition; then we turn and rend the terrible passion of Paris with teeth as

sharp as rat's teeth. We have Puritan women here, sour enough to tear the laces of Parisian finery, and eat out

all the poetry of your Parisian beauties, who undermine the happiness of others while they cry up their

walnuts and rancid bacon, glorify this squalid mousehole, and the dingy color and conventual small of our

"I admire such courage, madame," said Bianchon. "When we have to endure such misfortunes, it is well to

Amazed at the brilliant move by which Dinah thus placed provincial life at the mercy of her guests, in

anticipation of their sarcasms, Gatien Boirouge nudged Lousteau's elbow, with a glance and a smile, which

"But, madame," said Lousteau, "you are proving that we are still in Paris. I shall steal this gem of description;

Madame de la Baudraye was wily enoughan innocent form of cunning, to be sureto show the two

Parisians, one of whom she would choose to be her conquerer, the snare into which he would fall, reflecting

that she would have the upper hand at the moment when he should cease to see it.

"When you first come," said she, "you laugh at us. Then when you have forgotten the impression of Paris

brilliancy, and see us in our own sphere, you pay court to us, if only as a pastime. And you, who are famous

for your past passions, will be the object of attentions which will flatter you. Then take care!" cried Dinah,

with a coquettish gesture, raising herself above provincial absurdities and Lousteau's irony by her own

sarcastic speech. "When a poor little countrybred woman has an eccentric passion for some superior man,

some Parisian who has wandered into the provinces, it is to her something more than a sentiment; she makes

it her occupation and part of all her life. There is nothing more dangerous than the attachment of such a

woman; she compares, she studies, she reflects, she dreams; and she will not give up her dream, she thinks

"Now one of the catastrophes that weigh most heavily on a woman in the provinces is that abrupt termination

of her passion which is so often seen in England. In the country, a life under minute observation as keen as an

Indian's compels a woman either to keep on the rails or to start aside like a steam engine wrecked by an

obstacle. The strategies of love, the coquetting which form half the composition of a Parisian woman, are

"That is true," said Lousteau. "There is in a countrybred woman's heart a store of surprises, as in some toys."

"Dear me!" Dinah went on, "a woman will have spoken to you three times in the course of a winter, and

without your knowing it, you will be lodged in her heart. Then comes a picnic, an excursion, what not, and all

is saidor, if you prefer it, all is done! This conduct, which seems odd to unobserving persons, is really very

natural. A poet, such as you are, or a philosopher, an observer, like Doctor Bianchon, instead of vilifying the

provincial woman and believing her depraved, would be able to guess the wonderful unrevealed poetry, every

chapter, in short, of the sweet romance of which the last phrase falls to the benefit of some happy

"The provincial women I have met in Paris," said Lousteau, "were, in fact, rapid in their proceedings"

"My word, they are strange," said the lady, giving a significant shrug of her shoulders.

"They are like the playgoers who book for the second performance, feeling sure that the piece will not fail,"

"Paris is the monster that brings us grief," replied the Superior Woman. "The evil is seven leagues round, and

devastates the whole land. Provincial life is not selfexistent. It is only when a nation is divided into fifty

minor states that each can have a physiognomy of its own, and then a woman reflects the glory of the sphere

where she reigns. This social phenomenon, I am told, may be seen in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany; but in

France, as in every country where there is but one capital, a dead level of manners must necessarily result

"Then you would say that manners could only recover their individuality and native distinction by the

"That is hardly to be wished, for France would have to conquer too many countries," said Bianchon.

"This misfortune is unknown in England," exclaimed Dinah. "London does not exert such tyranny as that by

which Paris oppresses Francefor which, indeed, French ingenuity will at last find a remedy; however, it

"The English aristocracy," said Lousteau, hastening to put a word in, for he foresaw a Byronic paragraph,

"has the advantage over ours of assimilating every form of superiority; it lives in the midst of magnificent

parks; it is in London for no more than two months. It lives in the country, flourishing there, and making it

"Yes," said Madame de la Baudraye, "London is the capital of trade and speculation and the centre of

government. The aristocracy hold a 'mote' there for sixty days only; it gives and takes the passwords of the

day, looks in on the legislative cookery, reviews the girls to marry, the carriages to be sold, exchanges

greetings, and is away again; and is so far from amusing, that it cannot bear itself for more than the few days

"Hence," said Lousteau, hoping to stop this nimble tongue by an epigram, "in Perfidious Albion, as the

Constitutionnel has it, you may happen to meet a charming woman in any part of the kingdom."

"But charming English women!" replied Madame de la Baudraye with a smile. "Here is my mother, I will

Having introduced the two Paris lions to the ambitious skeleton that called itself woman under the name of

Madame Piedefera tall, lean personage, with a red face, teeth that were doubtfully genuine, and hair that

"I think that the clever woman of Sancerre is simply the greatest chatterbox," replied the journalist.

"Forgive me, I forgot you were in love with her," said Lousteau. "Forgive the cynicism of an old

scamp.Ask Bianchon; I have no illusions left. I see things as they are. The woman has evidently dried up

Gatien de Boirouge contrived to let Madame de la Baudraye know what the journalist had said of her in the

course of the dinner, which was copious, not to say splendid, and the lady took care not to talk too much

while it was proceeding. This lack of conversation betrayed Gatien's indiscretion. Etienne tried to regain his

However, halfway through the evening, the Baroness was gracious to Lousteau again. Have you never

observed what great meanness may be committed for small ends? Thus the haughty Dinah, who would not

sacrifice herself for a fool, who in the depths of the country led such a wretched life of struggles, of

suppressed rebellion, of unuttered poetry, who to get away from Lousteau had climbed the highest and

steepest peak of her scorn, and who would not have come down if she had seen the sham Byron at her feet,

Madame de la Baudraye had caught the mania for autographs; she possessed an oblong volume which

deserved the name of album better than most, as twothirds of the pages were still blank. The Baronne de

Fontaine, who had kept it for three months, had with great difficulty obtained a line from Rossini, six bars

written by Meyerbeer, the four lines that Victor Hugo writes in every album, a verse from Lamartine, a few

words from Beranger, Calypso ne pouvait se consoler du depart d'Ulysse (the first words of Telemaque)

written by George Sand, Scribe's famous lines on the Umbrella, a sentence from Charles Nodier, an outline of

distance by Jules Dupre, the signature of David d'Angers, and three notes written by Hector Berlioz.

Monsieur de Clagny, during a visit to Paris, added a song by Lacenairea much coveted autograph, two

lines from Fieschi, and an extremely short note from Napoleon, which were pasted on to pages of the album.

Then Monsieur Gravier, in the course of a tour, had persuaded Mademoiselle Mars to write her name on this

album, with Mademoiselles Georges, Taglioni, and Grisi, and some distinguished actors, such as Frederick

Lemaitre, Monrose, Bouffe, Rubini, Lablache, Nourrit, and Arnal; for he knew a set of old fellows brought up

This beginning of a collection was all the more precious to Dinah because she was the only person for ten

leagues round who owned an album. Within the last two years, however, several young ladies had acquired

such books, in which they made their friends and acquaintances write more or less absurd quotations or

sentiments. You who spend your lives in collecting autographs, simple and happy souls, like Dutch tulip

fanciers, you will excuse Dinah when, in her fear of not keeping her guests more than two days, she begged

Bianchon to enrich the volume she handed to him with a few lines of his writing.

"What makes the populace dangerous is that it has in its pocket an absolution for every crime.

"We will second the man who is brave enough to plead in favor of the Monarchy," Desplein's great pupil

"The distinction between Napoleon and a watercarrier is evident only to Society; Nature takes no account of

"Ah!" cried Dinah, amazed, "you rich men take a gold piece out of your purse as poor men bring out a

farthing. . . . I do not know," she went on, turning to Lousteau, "whether it is taking an unfair advantage of a

"Nay, madame, you flatter me. Bianchon is a great man, but I am too insignificant!Twenty years hence my

name will be more difficult to identify than that of the Public Prosecutor whose axiom, written in your album,

will designate him as an obscurer Montesquieu. And I should want at least twentyfour hours to improvise

"I wish you needed a fortnight," said Madame de la Baudraye graciously, as she handed him the book. "I

At five next morning all the party in the Chateau d'Anzy were astir, little La Baudraye having arranged a

day's sport for the Parisians less for their pleasure than to gratify his own conceit. He was delighted to

make them walk over the twelve hundred acres of waste land that he was intending to reclaim, an undertaking

that would cost some hundred thousand francs, but which might yield an increase of thirty to sixty thousand

"Do you know why the Public Prosecutor has not come out with us?" asked Gatien Boirouge of Monsieur

"Why he told us that he was obliged to sit today; the minor cases are before the Court," replied the other.

"And did you believe that?" cried Gatien. "Well, my papa said to me, 'Monsieur Lebas will not join you early,

"Indeed!" said Gravier, changing countenance. "And Monsieur de la Baudraye is gone to La Charite!"

"Horace is right, said Lousteau. "I cannot imagine why you trouble your heads so much about each other; you

Horace Bianchon looked at Etienne Lousteau, as much as to say that newspaper epigrams and the satire of the

On reaching a copse, Monsieur Gravier left the two great men and Gatien, under the guidance of a keeper, to

"Well, we must wait for Monsieur Gravier," said Bianchon, when they had reached a clearing.

"You may be a great physician," said Gatien, "but you are ignorant of provincial life. You mean to wait for

Monsieur Gravier?By this time he is running like a hare, in spite of his little round stomach; he is within

twenty minutes of Anzy by now" Gatien looked at his watch. "Good! he will be just in time."

"At the chateau for breakfast," replied Gatien. "Do you suppose I could rest easy if Madame de la Baudraye

were alone with Monsieur de Clagny? There are two of them now; they will keep an eye on each other. Dinah

"Ah, ha! Then Madame de la Baudraye has not yet made up her mind?" said Lousteau.

"So mamma thinks. For my part, I am afraid that Monsieur de Clagny has at last succeeded in bewitching

Madame de la Baudraye. If he has been able to show her that he had any chance of putting on the robes of the

Keeper of the Seals, he may have hidden his moleskin complexion, his terrible eyes, his touzled mane, his

voice like a hoarse crier's, his bony figure, like that of a starveling poet, and have assumed all the charms of

Adonis. If Dinah sees Monsieur de Clagny as Attorney General, she may see him as a handsome youth.

Eloquence has great privileges.Besides, Madame de la Baudraye is full of ambition. She does not like

"But what interest have you in all this?" said Lousteau. "If she is in love with the Public Prosecutor!Ah!

"You who live in Paris," said Gatien, "meet as many different women as there are days in the year. But at

Sancerre, where there are not half a dozen, and where, of those six, five set up for the most extravagant

virtue, when the handsomest of them all keeps you at an infinite distance by looks as scornful as though she

were of the blood royal, a young man of twoandtwenty may surely be allowed to make a guess at her

"Consideration! So that is what you call it in these parts?" said the journalist with a smile.

"I should suppose Madame de la Baudraye to have too much good taste to trouble her head about that ugly

"Horace," said Lousteau, "look here, O learned interpreter of human nature, let us lay a trap for the Public

Prosecutor; we shall be doing our friend Gatien a service, and get a laugh out of it. I do not love Public

"Well, after dinner we will tell sundry little anecdotes of wives caught out by their husbands, killed, murdered

under the most terrible circumstances.Then we shall see the faces that Madame de la Baudraye and de

"I know a newspaper editor," Lousteau went on, addressing Gatien, "who, anxious to forefend a grievous fate,

will take no stories but such as tell the tale of lovers burned, hewn, pounded, or cut to pieces; of wives boiled,

fried, or baked; he takes them to his wife to read, hoping that sheer fear will keep her faithfulsatisfied with

that humble alternative, poor man! 'You see, my dear, to what the smallest error may lead you!' says he,

"Madame de la Baudraye is quite guiltless; this youth sees double," said Bianchon. "Madame Piedefer seems

to me far too pious to invite her daughter's lover to the Chateau d'Anzy. Madame de la Baudraye would have

to hoodwink her mother, her husband, her maid, and her mother's maid; that is too much to do. I acquit her."

"Well with more reason because her husband never 'quits her,' " said Gatien, laughing at his own wit.

"We can easily remember two or three stories that will make Dinah quake," said Lousteau. "Young

manand you too, Bianchonlet me beg you to maintain a stern demeanor; be thorough diplomatists, an

easy manner without exaggeration, and watch the faces of the two criminals, you know, without seeming to

do soout of the corner of your eye, or in a glass, on the sly. This morning we will hunt the hare, this

The evening began with a triumph for Lousteau, who returned the album to the lady with this elegy written in

You ask for verse from me, the feeble prey Of this selfseeking world, a waif and stray With none to whom

to cling; From meunhappy, purblind, hopeless devil! Who e'en in what is good see only evil In any earthly

This page, the pastime of a dame so fair, May not reflect the shadow of my care, For all things have their

place. Of love, to ladies bright, the poet sings, Of joy, and balls, and dress, and dainty things Nay, or of

It were a bitter jest to bid the pen Of one so worn with life, so hating men, Depict a scene of joy. Would you

exult in sight to one born blind, Orcruel! of a mother's love remind Some hapless orphan boy?

When cold despair has gripped a heart still fond, When there is no young heart that will respond To it in love,

the future is a lie. If there is none to weep when he is sad, And share his woe, a man were better dead! And

Give me your pity! often I blaspheme The sacred name of God. Does it not seem That I was born in vain?

Why should I bless him? Or why thank Him, since He might have made me handsome, rich, a prince And

"And you have written those verses since yesterday?" cried Clagny in a suspicious tone.

"Dear me, yes, as I was following the game; it is only too evident! I would gladly have done something better

"They are, alas! the expression of a too genuine feeling," replied Lousteau, in a tone of deep dejection.

The reader will, of course, have guessed that the journalist had stored these lines in his memory for ten years

at least, for he had written them at the time of the Restoration in disgust at being unable to get on. Madame de

la Baudraye gazed at him with such pity as the woes of genius inspire; and Monsieur de Clagny, who caught

her expression, turned in hatred against this sham Jeune Malade (the name of an Elegy written by Millevoye).

He sat down to backgammon with the cure of Sancerre. The Presiding Judge's son was so extremely obliging

as to place a lamp near the two players in such a way as that the light fell full on Madame de la Baudraye,

who took up her work; she was embroidering in coarse wool a wickerplait paperbasket. The three

"For whom are you decorating that pretty basket, madame?" said Lousteau. "For some charity lottery,

"No," she said, "I think there is too much display in charity done to the sound of a trumpet."

"Can there be any indiscretion," said Lousteau, "in inquiring who the happy mortal may be in whose room

"There is no happy mortal in the case," said Dinah; "it is for Monsieur de la Baudraye."

The Public Prosecutor looked slily at Madame de la Baudraye and her work, as if he had said to himself, "I

"Why, madame, may we not think him happy in having a lovely wife, happy in her decorating his

paperbaskets so charmingly? The colors are red and black, like Robin Goodfellow. If ever I marry, I only

hope that twelve years after, my wife's embroidered baskets may still be for me."

"And why should they not be for you?" said the lady, fixing her fine gray eyes, full of invitation, on Etienne's

"Parisians believe in nothing," said the lawyer bitterly. "The virtue of women is doubted above all things with

terrible insolence. Yes, for some time past the books you have written, you Paris authors, your farces, your

"Come, come, Monsieur the Public Prosecutor," retorted Etienne, laughing, "I left you to play your game in

peace, I did not attack you, and here you are bringing an indictment against me. On my honor as a journalist,

I have launched above a hundred articles against the writers you speak of; but I confess that in attacking them

it was to attempt something like criticism. Be just; if you condemn them, you must condemn Homer, whose

Iliad turns on Helen of Troy; you must condemn Milton's Paradise Lost. Eve and her serpent seem to me a

pretty little case of symbolical adultery; you must suppress the Psalms of David, inspired by the highly

adulterous love affairs of that Louis XIV. of Judah; you must make a bonfire of Mithridate, le Tartuffe,

l'Ecole des Femmes, Phedre, Andromaque, le Mariage de Figaro, Dante's Inferno, Petrarch's Sonnets, all the

works of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the romances of the Middle Ages, the History of France, and of Rome,

etc., etc. Excepting Bossuet's Histoire des Variations and Pascal's Provinciales, I do not think there are many

books left to read if you insist on eliminating all those in which illicit love is mentioned."

Etienne, nettled by the superior air assumed by Monsieur de Clagny, wanted to infuriate him by one of those

colddrawn jests which consist in defending an opinion in which we have no belief, simply to rouse the

wrath of a poor man who argues in good faith; a regular journalist's pleasantry.

"If we take up the political attitude into which you would force yourself," he went on, without heeding the

lawyer's remark, "and assume the part of Public Prosecutor of all the agesfor every Government has its

public ministrywell, the Catholic religion is infected at its fountainhead by a startling instance of illegal

union. In the opinion of King Herod, and of Pilate as representing the Roman Empire, Joseph's wife figured

as an adulteress, since, by her avowal, Joseph was not the father of Jesus. The heathen judge could no more

recognize the Immaculate Conception than you yourself would admit the possibility of such a miracle if a

new religion should nowadays be preached as based on a similar mystery. Do you suppose that a judge and

jury in a police court would give credence to the operation of the Holy Ghost! And yet who can venture to

assert that God will never again redeem mankind? Is it any better now than it was under Tiberius?"

"I grant it," said the journalist, "but not with malicious intent. You cannot suppress historical fact. In my

opinion, Pilate, when he sentenced Jesus, and Anytuswho spoke for the aristocratic party at Athenswhen

he insisted on the death of Socrates, both represented established social interests which held themselves

legitimate, invested with cooperative powers, and obliged to defend themselves. Pilate and Anytus in their

time were not less logical than the public prosecutors who demanded the heads of the sergeants of La

Rochelle; who, at this day, are guillotining the republicans who take up arms against the throne as established

by the revolution of July, and the innovators who aim at upsetting society for their own advantage under

pretence of organizing it on a better footing. In the eyes of the great families of Greece and Rome, Socrates

and Jesus were criminals; to those ancient aristocracies their opinions were akin to those of the Mountain; and

if their followers had been victorious, they would have produced a little 'ninetythree' in the Roman Empire

"To adultery!For thus, monsieur, a Buddhist as he smokes his pipe may very well assert that the Christian

religion is founded in adultery; as we believe that Mahomet is an impostor; that his Koran is an epitome of

the Old Testament and the Gospels; and that God never had the least intention of constituting that

"If there were many men like you in Franceand there are more than enough, unfortunatelyall

"And there would be no religion at all," said Madame Piedefer, who had been making strangely wry faces all

"You are paining them very much," said Bianchon to Lousteau in an undertone. "Do not talk of religion; you

"If I were a writer or a romancer," said Monsieur Gravier, "I should take the side of the luckless husbands. I,

who have seen many things, and strange things too, know that among the ranks of deceived husbands there

are some whose attitude is not devoid of energy, men who, at a crisis, can be very dramatic, to use one of

"You are very right, my dear Monsieur Gravier," said Lousteau. "I never thought that deceived husbands

"Do you not think a husband's confidence a sublime thing?" said Bianchon. "He believes in his wife, he does

not suspect her, he trusts her implicitly. But if he is so weak as to trust her, you make game of him; if he is

jealous and suspicious, you hate him; what, then, I ask you, is the happy medium for a man of spirit?"

"If Monsieur de Clagny had not just expressed such vehement disapproval of the immorality of stories in

which the matrimonial compact is violated, I could tell you of a husband's revenge," said Lousteau.

Monsieur de Clagny threw the dice with a convulsive jerk, and dared not look up at the journalist.

"A story, from you!" cried Madame de la Baudraye. "I should hardly have dared to hope for such a treat"

"It is not my story, madame; I am not clever enough to invent such a tragedy. It was told meand how

delightfully!by one of our greatest writers, the finest literary musician of our day, Charles Nodier."

"Well, tell it," said Dinah. "I never met Monsieur Nodier, so you have no comparison to fear."

"Not long after the 18th Brumaire," Etienne began, "there was, as you know, a call to arms in Brittany and la

Vendee. The First Consul, anxious before all things for peace in France, opened negotiations with the rebel

chiefs, and took energetic military measures; but, while combining his plans of campaign with the insinuating

charm of Italian diplomacy, he also set the Machiavelian springs of the police in movement, Fouche then

being at its head. And none of these means were superfluous to stifle the fire of war then blaring in the West.

"At this time a young man of the Maille family was despatched by the Chouans from Brittany to Saumur, to

open communications between certain magnates of that town and its environs and the leaders of the Royalist

party. The envoy was, in fact, arrested on the very day he landedfor he traveled by boat, disguised as a

master mariner. However, as a man of practical intelligence, he had calculated all the risks of the

undertaking; his passport and papers were all in order, and the men told off to take him were afraid of

"The Chevalier de BeauvoirI now remember his namehad studied his part well; he appealed to the

family whose name he had borrowed, persisted in his false address, and stood his examination so boldly that

he would have been set at large but for the blind belief that the spies had in their instructions, which were

unfortunately only too minute. In this dilemma the authorities were more ready to risk an arbitrary act than to

let a man escape to whose capture the Minister attached great importance. In those days of liberty the agents

of the powers in authority cared little enough for what we now regard as legal. The Chevalier was therefore

imprisoned provisionally, until the superior officials should come to some decision as to his identity. He had

not long to wait for it; orders were given to guard the prisoner closely in spite of his denials.

"The Chevalier de Beauvoir was next transferred, in obedience to further orders, to the Castle of l'Escarpe, a

name which sufficiently indicates its situation. This fortress, perched on very high rocks, has precipices for its

trenches; it is reached on all sides by steep and dangerous paths; and, like every ancient castle, its principal

gate has a drawbridge over a wide moat. The commandant of this prison, delighted to have charge of a man

of family whose manners were most agreeable, who expressed himself well, and seemed highly educated,

received the Chevalier as a godsend; he offered him the freedom of the place on parole, that they might

"Beauvoir was a loyal gentleman, but, unfortunately, he was also a very handsome youth. He had attractive

features, a dashing air, a pleasing address, and extraordinary strength. Well made, active, full of enterprise,

and loving danger, he would have made an admirable leader of guerillas, and was the very man for the part.

The commandant gave his prisoner the most comfortable room, entertained him at his table, and at first had

nothing but praise for the Vendean. This officer was a Corsican and married; his wife was pretty and

charming, and he thought her, perhaps, not to be trustedat any rate, he was as jealous as a Corsican and a

rather illlooking soldier may be. The lady took a fancy to Beauvoir, and he found her very much to his taste;

perhaps they loved! Love in a prison is quick work. Did they commit some imprudence? Was the sentiment

they entertained something warmer than the superficial gallantry which is almost a duty of men towards

"Beauvoir never fully explained this rather obscure episode of the story; it is at least certain that the

commandant thought himself justified in treating his prisoner with excessive severity. Beauvoir was placed in

the dungeon, fed on black bread and cold water, and fettered in accordance with the timehonored traditions

of the treatment lavished on captives. His cell, under the fortressyard, was vaulted with hard stone, the walls

"When the luckless man had convinced himself of the impossibility of escape, he fell into those daydreams

which are at once the comfort and the crowning despair of prisoners. He gave himself up to the trifles which

in such cases seem so important; he counted the hours and the days; he studied the melancholy trade of being

prisoner; he became absorbed in himself, and learned the value of air and sunshine; then, at the end of a

fortnight, he was attacked by that terrible malady, that fever for liberty, which drives prisoners to those heroic

efforts of which the prodigious achievements seem to us impossible, though true, and which my friend the

doctor" (and he turned to Bianchon) "would perhaps ascribe to some unknown forces too recondite for his

physiological analysis to detect, some mysteries of the human will of which the obscurity baffles science."

"Beauvoir was eating his heart out, for death alone could set him free. One morning the turnkey, whose duty

it was to bring him his food, instead of leaving him when he had given him his meagre pittance, stood with

his arms folded, looking at him with strange meaning. Conversation between them was brief, and the warder

never began it. The Chevalier was therefore greatly surprised when the man said to him: 'Of course,

monsieur, you know your own business when you insist on being always called Monsieur Lebrun, or citizen

Lebrun. It is no concern of mine; ascertaining your name is no part of my duty. It is all the same to me

whether you call yourself Peter or Paul. If every man minds his own business, the cows will not stray. At the

same time, I know,' said he, with a wink, 'that you are Monsieur Charles FelixTheodore, Chevalier de

Beauvoir, and cousin to Madame la Duchesse de Maille.Heh?' he added after a short silence, during which

"Beauvoir, seeing that he was safe under lock and key, did not imagine that his position could be any the

" 'Well, and supposing I were the Chevalier de Beauvoir, what should I gain by that?' said he.

" 'Oh, there is everything to be gained by it,' replied the jailer in an undertone. 'I have been paid to help you to

get away; but wait a minute! If I were suspected in the smallest degree, I should be shot out of hand. So I

have said that I will do no more in the matter than will just earn the money.Look here,' said he, taking a

small file out of his pocket, 'this is your key; with this you can cut through one of your bars. By the Mass, but

it will not be any easy job,' he went on, glancing at the narrow loophole that let daylight into the dungeon.

"It was in a splayed recess under the deep cornice that ran round the top of the tower, between the brackets

" 'Monsieur,' said the man, 'you must take care to saw through the iron low enough to get your body through.'

" 'But high enough to leave a stanchion to fasten a cord to,' the warder went on.

" 'Here,' said the man, throwing down a knotted rope. 'It is made of raveled linen, that you may be supposed

to have contrived it yourself, and it is long enough. When you have got to the bottom knot, let yourself drop

gently, and the rest you must manage for yourself. You will probably find a carriage somewhere in the

neighborhood, and friends looking out for you. But I know nothing about that.I need not remind you that

there is a manatarms to the right of the tower. You will take care, of course, to choose a dark night, and

" 'Well, that may happen nevertheless,' replied the jailer, with a stupid expression.

"Beauvoir thought this was merely one of the aimless remarks that such folks indulge in. The hope of

freedom filled him with such joy that he could not be troubled to consider the words of a man who was no

more than a better sort of peasant. He set to work at once, and had filed the bars through in the course of the

day. Fearing a visit from the Governor, he stopped up the breaches with bread crumb rubbed in rust to make

it look like iron; he hid his rope, and waited for a favorable night with the intensity of anticipation, the deep

"At last, one murky night, an autumn night, he finished cutting through the bars, tied the cord firmly to the

stump, and perched himself on the sill outside, holding on by one hand to the piece of iron remaining. Then

he waited for the darkest hour of the night, when the sentinels would probably be asleep; this would be not

long before dawn. He knew the hours of their rounds, the length of each watch, every detail with which

prisoners, almost involuntarily, become familiar. He waited till the moment when one of the menatarms

had spent twothirds of his watch and gone into his box for shelter from the fog. Then, feeling sure that the

chances were at the best for his escape, he let himself down knot by knot, hanging between earth and sky, and

clinging to his rope with the strength of a giant. All was well. At the last knot but one, just as he was about to

let himself drop, a prudent impulse led him to feel for the ground with his feet, and he found no footing. The

predicament was awkward for a man bathed in sweat, tired, and perplexed, and in a position where his life

was at stake on even chances. He was about to risk it, when a trivial incident stopped him; his hat fell off;

happily, he listened for the noise it must make in striking the ground, and he heard not a sound.

"The prisoner felt vaguely suspicious as to this state of affairs. He began to wonder whether the Commandant

had not laid a trap for him but if so, why? Torn by doubts, he almost resolved to postpone the attempt till

another night. At any rate, he would wait for the first gleam of day, when it would still not be impossible to

escape. His great strength enabled him to climb up again to his window; still, he was almost exhausted by the

time he gained the sill, where he crouched on the lookout, exactly like a cat on the parapet of a gutter. Before

long, by the pale light of dawn, he perceived as he waved the rope that there was a little interval of a hundred

" 'Thank you, my friend, the Governor!' said he, with characteristic coolness. Then, after a brief meditation on

"He laid his outer clothes conspicuously on the bed, left the rope outside to make it seem that he had fallen,

and hid himself behind the door to await the arrival of the treacherous turnkey, arming himself with one of

the iron bars he had filed out. The jailer, who returned rather earlier than usual to secure the dead man's

leavings, opened the door, whistling as he came in; but when he was at arm's length, Beauvoir hit him such a

tremendous blow on the head that the wretch fell in a heap without a cry; the bar had cracked his skull.

"The Chevalier hastily stripped him and put on his clothes, mimicked his walk, and, thanks to the early hour

and the undoubting confidence of the warders of the great gate, he walked out and away."

It did not seem to strike either the lawyer or Madame de la Baudraye that there was in this narrative the least

allusion that should apply to them. Those in the little plot looked inquiringly at each other, evidently

"Let us hear," said the audience, at a sign from Lousteau, conveying that Bianchon had a reputation as a

Among the stock of narratives he had in store, for every clever man has a fund of anecdotes as Madame de la

Baudraye had a collection of phrases, the doctor chose that which is known as La Grande Breteche, and is so

famous indeed, that it was put on the stage at the Gymnase Dramatique under the title of Valentine. So it is

not necessary to repeat it here, though it was then new to the inhabitants of the Chateau d'Anzy. And it was

told with the same finish of gesture and tone which had won such praise for Bianchon when at Mademoiselle

des Touches' supperparty he had told it for the first time. The final picture of the Spanish grandee, starved to

death where he stood in the cupboard walled up by Madame de Merret's husband, and that husband's last

word as he replied to his wife's entreaty, "You swore on that crucifix that there was no one in that closet!"

produced their full effect. There was a silent minute, highly flattering to Bianchon.

"Do you know, gentlemen," said Madame de la Baudraye, "love must be a mighty thing that it can tempt a

"I, who have certainly seen some strange things in the course of my life," said Gravier, "was cognizant in

"You come forward after two great performers," said Madame de la Baudraye, with coquettish flattery, as she

"Some little time after his entry into Madrid," said the Receiver General, "the Grand Duke of Berg invited

the magnates of the capital to an entertainment given to the newly conquered city by the French army. In

spite of the splendor of the affair, the Spaniards were not very cheerful; their ladies hardly danced at all, and

most of the company sat down to cards. The gardens of the Duke's palace were so brilliantly illuminated, that

the ladies could walk about in as perfect safety as in broad daylight. The fete was of imperial magnificence.

Nothing was grudged to give the Spaniards a high idea of the Emperor, if they were to measure him by the

"In an arbor near the house, between one and two in the morning, a party of French officers were discussing

the chances of war, and the not too hopeful outlook prognosticated by the conduct of the Spaniards present at

" 'I can only tell you,' said the surgeonmajor of the company of which I was paymaster, 'I applied formally

to Prince Murat only yesterday to be recalled. Without being afraid exactly of leaving my bones in the

Peninsula, I would rather dress the wounds made by our worthy neighbors the Germans. Their weapons do

not run quite so deep into the body as these Castilian daggers. Besides, a certain dread of Spain is, with me, a

sort of superstition. From my earliest youth I have read Spanish books, and a heap of gloomy romances and

tales of adventures in this country have given me a serious prejudice against its manners and customs.

" 'Well, now, since my arrival in Madrid, I have already been, not indeed the hero, but the accomplice of a

dangerous intrigue, as dark and mysterious as any romance by Lady (Mrs.) Radcliffe. I am apt to attend to my

presentiments, and I am off tomorrow. Murat will not refuse me leave, for, thanks to our varied services, we

" 'Since you mean to cut your stick, tell us what's up,' said an old Republican colonel, who cared not a rap for

"The surgeonmajor looked about him cautiously, as if to make sure who were his audience, and being

" 'We are none but Frenchmenthen, with pleasure, Colonel Hulot. About six days since, I was quietly

going home, at about eleven at night, after leaving General Montcornet, whose hotel is but a few yards from

mine. We had come away together from the Quartermaster General's, where we had played rather high at

bouillotte. Suddenly, at the corner of a narrow highstreet, two strangers, or rather, two demons, rushed upon

me and flung a large cloak round my head and arms. I yelled out, as you may suppose, like a dog that is

thrashed, but the cloth smothered my voice, and I was lifted into a chaise with dexterous rapidity. When my

two companions released me from the cloak, I heard these dreadful words spoken by a woman, in bad

" ' "If you cry out, or if you attempt to escape, if you make the very least suspicious demonstration, the

gentleman opposite to you will stab you without hesitation. So you had better keep quiet.Now, I will tell

you why you have been carried off. If you will take the trouble to put your hand out in this direction, you will

find your case of instruments lying between us; we sent a messenger for them to your rooms, in your name.

You will need them. We are taking you to a house that you may save the honor of a lady who is about to give

birth to a child that she wishes to place in this gentleman's keeping without her husband's knowledge. Though

monsieur rarely leaves his wife, with whom he is still passionately in love, watching over her with all the

vigilance of Spanish jealousy, she had succeeded in concealing her condition; he believes her to be ill. You

must bring the child into the world. The dangers of this enterprise do not concern us: only, you must obey us,

otherwise the lover, who is sitting opposite to you in this carriage, and who does not understand a word of

" ' "And who are you?" I asked, feeling for the speaker's hand, for her arm was inside the sleeve of a soldier's

" ' "I am my lady's waitingwoman," said she, "and ready to reward you with my own person if you show

" ' "Gladly," said I, seeing that I was inevitably started on a perilous adventure.

" 'Under favor of the darkness, I felt whether the person and figure of the girl were in keeping with the idea I

had formed of her from her tone of voice. The good soul had, no doubt, made up her mind from the first to

accept all the chances of this strange act of kidnapping, for she kept silence very obligingly, and the coach

had not been more than ten minutes on the way when she accepted and returned a very satisfactory kiss. The

lover, who sat opposite to me, took no offence at an occasional quite involuntary kick; as he did not

" ' "I can be your mistress on one condition only," said the woman, in reply to the nonsense I poured into her

ear, carried away by the fervor of an improvised passion, to which everything was unpropitious.

" ' "That you will never attempt to find out whose servant I am. If I am to go to you, it must be at night, and

" ' "You must allow me to bandage your eyes," said the maid. "You can lean on my arm, and I will lead you."

" 'She tied a handkerchief over my eyes, fastening it in a tight knot at the back of my head. I heard the sound

of a key being cautiously fitted to the lock of a little side door by the speechless lover who had sat opposite to

me. In a moment the waitingwoman, whose shape was slender, and who walked with an elegant

jauntiness'meneho, as they call it," Monsieur Gravier explained in a superior tone, "a word which describes

the swing which women contrive to give a certain part of their dress that shall be nameless.'The

waitingwoman'it is the surgeonmajor who is speaking," the narrator went on" 'led me along the

gravel walks of a large garden, till at a certain spot she stopped. From the louder sound of our footsteps, I

concluded that we were close to the house. "Now silence!" said she in a whisper, "and mind what you are

about. Do not overlook any of my signals; I cannot speak without terrible danger for both of us, and at this

moment your life is of the first importance." Then she added: "My mistress is in a room on the ground floor.

To get into it we must pass through her husband's room and close to his bed. Do not cough, walk softly, and

follow me closely, so as not to knock against the furniture or tread anywhere but on the carpets I laid down."

" 'The woman said no more, I heard a door open, I felt the warm air of the house, and we stole in like thieves.

Presently the girl's light hand removed the bandage. I found myself in a lofty and spacious room, badly

lighted by a smoky lamp. The window was open, but the jealous husband had fitted it with iron bars. I was in

" 'On the ground a woman was lying on a mat; her head was covered with a muslin veil, but I could see her

eyes through it full of tears and flashing with the brightness of stars; she held a handkerchief in her mouth,

biting it so hard that her teeth were set in it: I never saw finer limbs, but her body was writhing with pain like

a harpstring thrown on the fire. The poor creature had made a sort of struts of her legs by setting her feet

against a chest of drawers, and with both hands she held on to the bar of a chair, her arms outstretched, with

every vein painfully swelled. She might have been a criminal undergoing torture. But she did not utter a cry;

there was not a sound, all three speechless and motionless. The husband snored with reassuring regularity. I

wanted to study the waitingwoman's face, but she had put on a mask, which she had removed, no doubt,

during our drive, and I could see nothing but a pair of black eyes and a pleasingly rounded figure.

" 'The lover threw some towels over his mistress' legs and folded the muslin veil double over her face. As

soon as I had examined the lady with care, I perceived from certain symptoms which I had noted once before

on a very sad occasion in my life, that the infant was dead. I turned to the maid in order to tell her this.

Instantly the suspicious stranger drew his dagger; but I had time to explain the matter to the woman, who

explained in a word or two to him in a low voice. On hearing my opinion, a quick, slight shudder ran through

him from head to foot like a lightning flash; I fancied I could see him turn pale under his black velvet mask.

" 'The waitingwoman took advantage of a moment when he was bending in despair over the dying woman,

who had turned blue, to point to some glasses of lemonade standing on a table, at the same time shaking her

head negatively. I understood that I was not to drink anything in spite of the dreadful thirst that parched my

throat. The lover was thirsty too; he took an empty glass, poured out some fresh lemonade, and drank it off.

" 'At this moment the lady had a violent attack of pain, which showed me that now was the time to operate. I

summoned all my courage, and in about an hour had succeeded in delivering her of the child, cutting it up to

extract it. The Spaniard no longer thought of poisoning me, understanding that I had saved the mother's life.

Large tears fell on his cloak. The woman uttered no sound, but she trembled like a hunted animal, and was

" 'At one horribly critical moment she pointed in the direction of her husband's room; he had turned in his

sleep, and she alone had heard the rustle of the sheets, the creaking of the bed or of the curtain. We all

paused, and the lover and the waitingwoman, through the eyeholes of their masks, gave each other a look

" 'At that instant I put out my hand to take the glass of lemonade the Spaniard had drunk of. He, thinking that

I was about to take one of the full glasses, sprang forward like a cat, and laid his long dagger over the two

poisoned goblets, leaving me his own, and signing to me to drink what was left. So much was conveyed by

this quick action, and it was so full of good feeling, that I forgave him his atrocious schemes for killing me,

" 'After two hours of care and alarms, the maid and I put her mistress to bed. The lover, forced into so

perilous an adventure, had, to provide means in case of having to fly, a packet of diamonds stuck to paper;

these he put into my pocket without my knowing it; and I may add parenthetically, that as I was ignorant of

the Spaniard's magnificent gift, my servant stole the jewels the day after, and went off with a perfect fortune.

" 'I whispered my instructions to the waitingwoman as to the further care of her patient, and wanted to be

gone. The maid remained with her mistress, which was not very reassuring, but I was on my guard. The lover

made a bundle of the dead infant and the bloodstained clothes, tying it up tightly, and hiding it under his

cloak; he passed his hand over my eyes as if to bid me to see nothing, and signed to me to take hold of the

skirt of his coat. He went first out of the room, and I followed, not without a parting glance at my lady of an

hour. She, seeing the Spaniard had gone out, snatched off her mask and showed me an exquisite face.

" 'When I found myself in the garden, in the open air, I confess that I breathed as if a heavy load had been

lifted from my breast. I followed my guide at a respectful distance, watching his least movement with keen

attention. Having reached the little door, he took my hand and pressed a seal to my lips, set in a ring which I

had seen him wearing on a finger of his left hand, and I gave him to understand that this significant sign

would be obeyed. In the street two horses were waiting; we each mounted one. My Spaniard took my bridle,

held his own between his teeth, for his right hand held the bloodstained bundle, and we went off at lightning

" 'I could not see the smallest object by which to retrace the road we came by. At dawn I found myself close

" 'And you saw nothing which could lead you to suspect who the woman was whom you had attended?' the

" 'One thing only,' he replied. 'When I turned the unknown lady over, I happened to remark a mole on her

arm, about halfway down, as big as a lentil, and surrounded with brown hairs.'At this instant the rash

speaker turned pale. All our eyes, that had been fixed on his, followed his glance, and we saw a Spaniard,

whose glittering eyes shone through a clump of orangetrees. On finding himself the object of our attention,

the man vanished with the swiftness of a sylph. A young captain rushed in pursuit.

" 'By Heaven!' cried the surgeon, 'that basilisk stare has chilled me through, my friends. I can hear bells

" 'What a fool you are!' exclaimed Colonel Hulot. 'Falcon is on the track of the Spaniard who was listening,

" 'The devil's in it,' said Falcon; 'the man went through a wall, I believe! As I do not suppose that he is a

wizard, I fancy he must belong to the house! He knows every corner and turning, and easily escaped.'

" 'Come, come, keep calm, Bega,' said I (his name was Bega), 'we will sit on watch with you till you leave.

"In point of fact, three young officers who had been losing at play went home with the surgeon to his

"Within two days Bega had obtained his recall to France; he made arrangements to travel with a lady to

whom Murat had given a strong escort, and had just finished dinner with a party of friends, when his servant

came to say that a young lady wished to speak to him. The surgeon and the three officers went down

suspecting mischief. The stranger could only say, 'Be on your guard' when she dropped down dead. It was

the waitingwoman, who, finding she had been poisoned, had hoped to arrive in time to warn her lover.

" 'Devil take it!' cried Captain Falcon, 'that is what I call love! No woman on earth but a Spaniard can run

"Bega remained strangely pensive. To drown the dark presentiments that haunted him, he sat down to table

again, and with his companions drank immoderately. The whole party went early to bed, half drunk.

"In the middle of the night the hapless Bega was aroused by the sharp rattle of the curtain rings pulled

violently along the rods. He sat up in bed, in the mechanical trepidation which we all feel on waking with

such a start. He saw standing before him a Spaniard wrapped in a cloak, who fixed on him the same burning

"Bega shouted out, 'Help, help, come at once, friends!' But the Spaniard answered his cry of distress with a

"Having thus pronounced sentence as it were, the stranger pointed to the three other men sleeping soundly,

took from under his cloak the arm of a woman, freshly amputated, and held it out to Bega, pointing to a mole

like that he had so rashly described. 'Is it the same?' he asked. By the light of the lantern the man had set on

the bed, Bega recognized the arm, and his speechless amazement was answer enough.

"Without waiting for further information, the lady's husband stabbed him to the heart."

"You must tell that to the marines!" said Lousteau. "It needs their robust faith to swallow it! Can you tell me

"Monsieur," replied the ReceiverGeneral, "I nursed poor Bega, who died five days after in dreadful

"At the time of the expedition sent out to restore Ferdinand VII. I was appointed to a place in Spain; but,

happily for me, I got no further than Tours when I was promised the post of Receiver here at Sancerre. On the

eve of setting out I was at a ball at Madame de Listomere's, where we were to meet several Spaniards of high

rank. On rising from the cardtable, I saw a Spanish grandee, an afrancesado in exile, who had been about a

fortnight in Touraine. He had arrived very late at this ballhis first appearance in societyaccompanied by

his wife, whose right arm was perfectly motionless. Everybody made way in silence for this couple, whom

we all watched with some excitement. Imagine a picture by Murillo come to life. Under black and hollow

brows the man's eyes were like a fixed blaze; his face looked dried up, his bald skull was red, and his frame

was a terror to behold, he was so emaciated. His wifeno, you cannot imagine her. Her figure had the

supple swing for which the Spaniards created the word meneho; though pale, she was still beautiful; her

complexion was dazzlingly faira rare thing in a Spaniard; and her gaze, full of the Spanish sun, fell on you

" 'Madame,' said I to her, towards the end of the evening, 'what occurrence led to the loss of your arm?'

"Spain is a strange country," said Madame de la Baudraye. "It still shows traces of Arab manners."

"Oh!" said the journalist, laughing, "the mania for cutting off arms is an old one there. It turns up every now

and then like some of our newspaper hoaxes, for the subject has given plots for plays on the Spanish stage so

"Then do you think me capable of inventing such a story?" said Monsieur Gravier, nettled by Lousteau's

"Pooh!" said Bianchon, "the inventions of romances and playwriters are quite as often transferred from their

books and pieces into real life, as the events of real life are made use of on the stage or adapted to a tale. I

have seen the comedy of Tartufe played out with the exception of the close; Orgon's eyes could not be

"And the tragicomedy of Adolphe by Benjamin Constant is constantly enacted," cried Lousteau.

"And do you suppose," asked Madame de la Baudraye, "that such adventures as Monsieur Gravier has related

"Dear me!" cried Clagny, "of the ten or twelve startling crimes that are annually committed in France, quite

half are mixed up with circumstances at least as extraordinary as these, and often outdoing them in romantic

details. Indeed, is not this proved by the reports in the Gazette des Tribunauxthe Police newsin my

opinion, one of the worst abuses of the Press? This newspaper, which was started only in 1826 or '27, was not

in existence when I began my professional career, and the facts of the crime I am about to speak of were not

"In the quarter of SaintPierredesCorps at Tours a woman whose husband had disappeared at the time

when the army of the Loire was disbanded, and who had mourned him deeply, was conspicuous for her

excess of devotion. When the mission priests went through all the provinces to restore the crosses that had

been destroyed and to efface the traces of revolutionary impiety, this widow was one of their most zealous

proselytes, she carried a cross and nailed to it a silver heart pierced by an arrow; and, for a long time after,

she went every evening to pray at the foot of the cross which was erected behind the Cathedral apse.

"At last, overwhelmed by remorse, she confessed to a horrible crime. She had killed her husband, as Fualdes

was murdered, by bleeding him; she had salted the body and packed it in pieces into old casks, exactly as if it

have been pork; and for a long time she had taken a piece every morning and thrown it into the Loire. Her

confessor consulted his superiors, and told her that it would be his duty to inform the public prosecutor. The

woman awaited the action of the Law. The public prosecutor and the examining judge, on examining the

cellar, found the husband's head still in pickle in one of the casks. 'Wretched woman,' said the judge to the

accused, 'since you were so barbarous as to throw your husband's body into the river, why did you not get rid

"She was sentenced and executed at Tours," replied the lawyer; "but her repentance and piety had attracted

"And do you suppose, said Bianchon, "that we know all the tragedies that are played out behind the curtain of

private life that the public never lifts?It seems to me that human justice is ill adapted to judge of crimes as

between husband and wife. It has every right to intervene as the police; but in equity it knows nothing of the

"The victim has in many cases been for so long the tormentor," said Madame de la Baudraye guilelessly,

"that the crime would sometimes seem almost excusable if the accused could tell all."

This reply, led up to by Bianchon and by the story which Clagny had told, left the two Parisians excessively

At bedtime council was held, one of those discussions which take place in the passages of old

countryhouses where the bachelors linger, candle in hand, for mysterious conversations.

Monsieur Gravier was now informed of the object in view during this entertaining evening which had

"But, after all," said Lousteau, "our hostess' serenity may indicate deep depravity instead of the most

childlike innocence. The Public Prosecutor looks to me quite capable of suggesting that little La Baudraye

"He is not to return till tomorrow; who knows what may happen in the course of the night?" said Gatien.

In the life of a country house a number of practical jokes are considered admissible, some of them odiously

treacherous. Monsieur Gravier, who had seen so much of the world, proposed setting seals on the door of

Madame de la Baudraye and of the Public Prosecutor. The ducks that denounced the poet Ibycus are as

nothing in comparison with the single hair that these country spies fasten across the opening of a door by

means of two little flattened pills of wax, fixed so high up, or so low down, that the trick is never suspected.

If the gallant comes out of his own door and opens the other, the broken hair tells the tale.

When everybody was supposed to be asleep, the doctor, the journalist, the receiver of taxes, and Gatien came

barefoot, like robbers, and silently fastened up the two doors, agreeing to come again at five in the morning to

examine the state of the fastenings. Imagine their astonishment and Gatien's delight when all four, candle in

hand, and with hardly any clothes on, came to look at the hairs, and found them in perfect preservation on

"This quite alters the matter!" cried Lousteau. "You have been beating the bush for a willo'thewisp."

Monsieur Gravier and Gatien exchanged questioning glances which were meant to convey, "Is there not

"If Dinah is virtuous," said the journalist in a whisper to Bianchon, "she is worth an effort on my part to pluck

The idea of carrying by storm a fortress that had for nine years stood out against the besiegers of Sancerre

With this notion in his head, he was the first to go down and into the garden, hoping to meet his hostess. And

this chance fell out all the more easily because Madame de la Baudraye on her part wished to converse with

"You were out shooting yesterday, monsieur," said Madame de la Baudraye. "This morning I am rather

puzzled as to how to find you any new amusement; unless you would like to come to La Baudraye, where

you may study more of our provincial life than you can see here, for you have made but one mouthful of my

absurdities. However, the saying about the handsomest girl in the world is not less true of the poor provincial

"That little simpleton Gatien has, I suppose, related to you a speech I made simply to make him confess that

he adored you," said Etienne. "Your silence, during dinner the day before yesterday and throughout the

evening, was enough to betray one of those indiscretions which we never commit in Paris.What can I say?

I do not flatter myself that you will understand me. In fact, I laid a plot for the telling of all those stories

yesterday solely to see whether I could rouse you and Monsieur de Clagny to a pang of remorse.Oh! be

"If you had the slightest fancy for that estimable magistrate, you would have lost all your value in my

"You do not, you cannot love that cold, driedup, taciturn little usurer on wine casks and land, who would

leave any man in the lurch for twentyfive centimes on a renewal. Oh, I have fully recognized Monsieur de la

Baudraye's similarity to a Parisian billdiscounter; their nature is identical.At eightandtwenty,

handsome, well conducted, and childlessI assure you, madame, I never saw the problem of virtue more

admirably expressed.The author of Paquita la Sevillane must have dreamed many dreams!

"I can speak of such things without the hypocritical gloss lent them by young men, for I am old before my

time. I have no illusions left. Can a man have any illusions in the trade I follow?"

By opening the game in this tone, Lousteau cut out all excursions in the Pays de Tendre, where genuine

passion beats the bush so long; he went straight to the point and placed himself in a position to force the offer

of what women often make a man pray for, for years; witness the hapless Public Prosecutor, to whom the

greatest favor had consisted in clasping Dinah's hand to his heart more tenderly than usual as they walked,

And Madame de la Baudraye, to be true to her reputation as a Superior Woman, tried to console the Manfred

of the Press by prophesying such a future of love as he had not had in his mind.

"You have sought pleasure," said she, "but you have never loved. Believe me, true love often comes late in

life. Remember Monsieur de Gentz, who fell in love in his old age with Fanny Ellsler, and left the Revolution

"It seems to me unlikely," replied Lousteau. "I can still believe in love, but I have ceased to believe in

woman. There are in me, I suppose, certain defects which hinder me from being loved, for I have often been

thrown over. Perhaps I have too strong a feeling for the ideallike all men who have looked too closely into

Madame de la Baudraye at last heard the mind of a man who, flung into the wittiest Parisian circles,

represented to her its most daring axioms, its almost artless depravity, its advanced convictions; who, if he

were not really superior, acted superiority extremely well. Etienne, performing before Dinah, had all the

success of a first night. Paquita of Sancerre scented the storms, the atmosphere of Paris. She spent one of the

most delightful days of her life with Lousteau and Bianchon, who told her strange tales about the great men

of the day, the anecdotes which will some day form the Ana of our century; sayings and doings that were the

Of course, Lousteau spoke very ill of the great female celebrity of Le Berry, with the obvious intention of

flattering Madame de la Baudraye and leading her into literary confidences, by suggesting that she could rival

so great a writer. This praise intoxicated Madame de la Baudraye; and Monsieur de Clagny, Monsieur

Gravier, and Gatien, all thought her warmer in her manner to Etienne than she had been on the previous day.

Dinah's three attaches greatly regretted having all gone to Sancerre to blow the trumpet in honor of the

evening at Anzy; nothing, to hear them, had ever been so brilliant. The Hours had fled on feet so light that

none had marked their pace. The two Parisians they spoke of as perfect prodigies.

These exaggerated reports loudly proclaimed on the Mall brought sixteen persons to Anzy that evening, some

in family coaches, some in wagonettes, and a few bachelors on hired saddle horses. By about seven o'clock

this provincial company had made a more or less graceful entry into the huge Anzy drawingroom, which

Dinah, warned of the invasion, had lighted up, giving it all the lustre it was capable of by taking the holland

covers off the handsome furniture, for she regarded this assembly as one of her great triumphs. Lousteau,

Bianchon, and Dinah exchanged meaning looks as they studied the attitudes and listened to the speeches of

What invalided ribbons, what ancestral laces, what ancient flowers, more imaginative than imitative, were

boldly displayed on some perennial caps! The Presidente Boirouge, Bianchon's cousin, exchanged a few

words with the doctor, from whom she extracted some "advice gratis" by expatiating on certain pains in the

chest, which she declared were nervous, but which he ascribed to chronic indigestion.

"Simply drink a cup of tea every day an hour after dinner, as the English do, and you will get over it, for what

"He is certainly a great physician," said the Presidente, coming back to Madame de Clagny, Madame

"They say," replied Madame de Clagny behind her fan, "that Dinah sent for him, not so much with a view to

In the first excitement of this success, Lousteau introduced the great doctor as the only possible candidate at

the ensuing elections. But Bianchon, to the great satisfaction of the new Sousprefet, remarked that it seemed

"Only a physician without a practice," said he, "could care to be returned as a deputy. Nominate statesmen,

thinkers, men whose knowledge is universal, and who are capable of placing themselves on the high level

which a legislator should occupy. That is what is lacking in our Chambers, and what our country needs."

Two or three young ladies, some of the younger men, and the elder women stared at Lousteau as if he were a

"Monsieur Gatien Boirouge declares that Monsieur Lousteau makes twenty thousand francs a year by his

"Monsieur Gatien," said Madame Chandier, "get Monsieur Lousteau to talk a little louder. I have not heard

"What pretty boots he wears," said Mademoiselle Chandier to her brother, "and how they shine!"

Lousteau began to feel that he was too much on show, and saw in the manners of the good townsfolk

At this moment the footman, so calleda farmservant put into livery brought in the letters and papers,

and among them a packet of proof, which the journalist left for Bianchon; for Madame de la Baudraye, on

seeing the parcel, of which the form and string were obviously from the printers, exclaimed:

"Not literature," replied he, "but a review in which I am now finishing a story to come out ten days hence. I

have reached the stage of 'To be concluded in our next,' so I was obliged to give my address to the printer.

Oh, we eat very hardearned bread at the hands of these speculators in black and white! I will give you a

"When will the conversation begin?" Madame de Clagny asked of Dinah, as one might ask, "When do the

"I fancied we should hear some amusing stories," said Madame Popinot to her cousin, the Presidente

At this moment, when the good folks of Sancerre were beginning to murmur like an impatient pit, Lousteau

observed that Bianchon was lost in meditation inspired by the wrapper round the proofs.

"Why, here is the most fascinating romance possible on some spoiled proof used to wrap yours in. Here, read

"Let us see," said Lousteau, taking the sheet the doctor held out to him, and he read aloud as follows:

cavern. Rinaldo, indignant at his companions' cowardice, for they had no courage but in the open field, and

"Then I go alone?" said he. He seemed to reflect, and then he went on: "You are poor wretches. I shall

"My Captain," said Lamberti, "if you should be captured without having succeeded?"

"That is the end of the page," said Lousteau, to whom every one had listened devoutly.

"From the first word, ladies," said the journalist, jumping at an opportunity of mystifying the natives, "it is

evident that the brigands are in a cave. But how careless romancers of that date were as to details which are

nowadays so closely, so elaborately studied under the name of 'local color.' If the robbers were in a cavern,

instead of pointing to the sky he ought to have pointed to the vault above him.In spite of this inaccuracy,

Rinaldo strikes me as a man of spirit, and his appeal to God is quite Italian. There must have been a touch of

local color in this romance. Why, what with brigands, and a cavern, and one Lamberti who could foresee

future possibilities there is a whole melodrama in that page. Add to these elements a little intrigue, a

peasant maiden with her hair dressed high, short skirts, and a hundred or so of bad couplets.Oh! the public

will crowd to see it! And then Rinaldohow well the name suits Lafont! By giving him black whiskers,

tightlyfitting trousers, a cloak, a moustache, a pistol, and a peaked hatif the manager of the Vaudeville

Theatre were but bold enough to pay for a few newspaper articles, that would secure fifty performances, and

six thousand francs for the author's rights, if only I were to cry it up in my columns.

The Duchess of Bracciano found her glove. Adolphe, who had brought her back to the orange grove, might

certainly have supposed that there was some purpose in her forgetful ness, for at this moment the arbor was

deserted. The sound of the fes tivities was audible in the distance. The puppet show that had been promised

had attracted all the guests to the ballroom. Never had Olympia looked more beautiful. Her lover's eyes met

hers with an answering glow, and they under stood each other. There was a mo ment of silence, delicious

to their souls, and impossible to describe. They sat down on the same bench where they had sat in the

"Devil take it! Our Rinaldo has vanished!" cried Lousteau. "But a literary man once started by this page

would make rapid progress in the comprehension of the plot. The Duchesse Olympia is a lady who could

"Unless she may be classed between the oyster and headclerk of an office, the two creatures nearest to

marble in the zoological kingdom, it is impossible to discern in Olympia" Bianchon began.

"A woman of thirty," Madame de la Baudraye hastily interposed, fearing some all too medical term.

"Then Adolphe must be twoandtwenty," the doctor went on, "for an Italian woman at thirty is equivalent to

"From these two facts, the romance may easily be reconstructed," said Lousteau. "And this Cavaliere

Paluzziwhat a man!The style is weak in these two passages; the author was perhaps a clerk in the

"In his time," said Bianchon, "the censor flourished; you must show as much indulgence to a man who

underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805 as to those who went to the scaffold in 1793."

"Do you understand in the least?" asked Madame Gorju timidly of Madame de Clagny.

The Public Prosecutor's wife, who, to use a phrase of Monsieur Gravier's, might have put a Cossack to flight

in 1814, straightened herself in her chair like a horseman in his stirrups, and made a face at her neighbor,

Lousteau looked at the two women, two Indian idols, and contrived to keep his countenance. He thought it

dress rustled in the silence. Sud denly Cardinal Borborigano stood before the Duchess.

"His face was gloomy, his brow was dark with clouds, and a bitter smile lurked in his wrinkles.

"Madame," said he, "you are under suspicion. If you are guilty, fly. If you are not, still fly; because, whether

criminal or innocent, you will find it easier to defend yourself from a distance."

"I thank your Eminence for your solicitude," said she. "The Duke of Bracciano will reappear when I find it

"Cardinal Borborigano!" exclaimed Bianchon. "By the Pope's keys! If you do not agree with me that there is

a magnificent creation in the very name, if at those words dress rustled in the silence you do not feel all the

poetry thrown into the part of Schedoni by Mrs. Radcliffe in The Black Penitent, you do not deserve to read a

"For my part," said Dinah, who had some pity on the eighteen faces gazing up at Lousteau, "I see how the

story is progressing. I know it all. I am in Rome; I can see the body of a murdered husband whose wife, as

bold as she is wicked, has made her bed on the crater of a volcano. Every night, at every kiss, she says to

"Can you see her," said Lousteau, "clasping Monsieur Adolphe in her arms, to her heart, throwing her whole

life into a kiss?Adolphe I see as a wellmade young man, but not cleverthe sort of man an Italian

woman likes. Rinaldo hovers behind the scenes of a plot we do not know, but which must be as full of

incident as a melodrama by Pixerecourt. Or we can imagine Rinaldo crossing the stage in the background like

"Do you understand anything of it all?" Madame Piedefer asked of the Presidente.

Olympia looked at the key, and fancied she recognized it as her own. But Rinaldo had changed it; his cunning

had triumphed; he had the right key. Like a modern Cartouche, he was no less skilful than bold, and

suspecting that nothing but a vast treasure could require a duchess to carry it constantly at her belt.

"Guess!" cried Lousteau. "The corresponding page is not here. We must look to page 212 to relieve our

"Dead? But ought you not to grant the last request he made, and to give him his liberty on the con

"And then comes an exquisite galloping goat, a tailpiece drawn by Normand, and cut by Duplat.the

"That is the end of the chapter," said Lousteau. "The fact of this tailpiece changes my views as to the

authorship. To have his book got up, under the Empire, with vignettes engraved on wood, the writer must

have been a Councillor of State, or Madame BarthelemyHadot, or the late lamented Desforges, or Sewrin."

" 'Adolphe was silent.'Ah!" cried Bianchon, "the Duchess must have been under thirty."

"You see," said Lousteau, "the waste sheet has been printed fair on one side only. In printer's lingo, it is a

back sheet, or, to make it clearer, the other side which would have to be printed is covered all over with pages

printed one above another, all experiments in making up. It would take too long to explain to you all the

complications of a makingup sheet; but you may understand that it will show no more trace of the first

twelve pages that were printed on it than you would in the least remember the first stroke of the bastinado if a

"I am quite bewildered," said Madame PopinotChandier to Monsieur Gravier. "I am vainly trying to connect

"You have not the key to the jest," said Monsieur Gravier. "Well! no more have I, fair lady, if that can

"But here is another sheet," said Bianchon, hunting on the table where the proofs had been laid.

"Capital!" said Lousteau, "and it is complete and uninjured. It is signed IV.; J, Second Edition. Ladies, the

figure IV. means that this is part of the fourth volume. The letter J, the tenth letter of the alphabet, shows that

this is the tenth sheet. And it is perfectly clear to me, that in spite of any publisher's tricks, this romance in

four duodecimo volumes, had a great success, since it came to a second edition.We will read on and find a

"But," said Madame de la Baudraye, "some important events have taken place between your waste sheet and

"This complete sheet, madame, this precious madeup sheet. But does the waste sheet in which the Duchess

forgets her gloves in the arbor belong to the fourth volume? Well, deuce take itto proceed.

Rinaldo saw no safer refuge than to make forthwith for the cellar where the treasures of the Bracciano fam

ily no doubt lay hid. As light of foot as Camilla sung by the Latin poet, he flew to the entrance to the Baths of

Vespasian. The torchlight already flickered on the walls when Rinaldo, with the readiness be stowed on him

by nature, discovered the door concealed in the stone work, and suddenly vanished. A hideous thought then

flashed on Rinaldo's brain like lightning rend ing a cloud: He was imprisoned! He felt the wall with uneasy

"Yes, this madeup sheet follows the waste sheet. The last page of the damaged sheet was 212, and this is

217. In fact, since Rinaldo, who in the earlier fragment stole the key of the Duchess' treasure by exchanging it

for another very much like it, is nowon the madeup sheetin the palace of the Dukes of Bracciano, the

story seems to me to be advancing to a conclusion of some kind. I hope it is as clear to you as it is to me.I

understand that the festivities are over, the lovers have returned to the Bracciano Palace; it is nightone

"And Adolphe too!" said President Boirouge, who was considered rather free in his speech.

"And the style!" said Bianchon."Rinaldo, who saw no better refuge than to make for the cellar."

"It is quite clear that neither Maradan, nor Treuttel and Wurtz, nor Doguereau, were the printers," said

Lousteau, "for they employed correctors who revised the proofs, a luxury in which our publishers might very

well indulge, and the writers of the present day, would benefit greatly. Some scrubby pamphlet printer on the

"What has Madame Hadot of La Charite to do with it?" the Presidente asked of her son.

"This Madame Hadot, my dear friend," the hostess answered, "was an authoress, who lived at the time of the

"What of Madame de Genlis and Madame de Stael?" cried the Public Prosecutor, piqued on Dinah's account

and gave a shriek of despair when he had vainly sought any trace of a secret spring. It was impossible to

ignore the horrible truth. The door, cleverly constructed to serve the vengeful purposes of the Duchess, could

not be opened from within. Rinaldo laid his cheek against the wall in various spots; nowhere could he feel the

warmer air from the passage. He had hoped he might find a crack that would show him where there was an

opening in the wall, but nothing, nothing! The whole seemed to be of one block of marble.

"Well, we fancied that the cry of the hyaena was a recent invention of our own!" said Lousteau, "and here it

was already known to the literature of the Empire. It is even introduced with a certain skill in natural history,

"There, you see!" cried Bianchon. "Interest, the romantic demon, has you by the collar, as he had me a while

"What a coxcomb!" said the Presiding Judge in a whisper to his neighbor the Sousprefet.

A deep groan answered Rinaldo's cry, but in his alarm he took it for an echo, so weak and hollow was the

"If I stir from this spot I shall never find it again," thought Ri naldo, when he had recovered his usual

"I am the Duke of Bracciano. Whoever you may be, if you are not a follower of the Duchess', in the name of

"I should have to know where to find you, Monsieur le Duc," said Ri naldo, with the insolence of a man

"I can see you, my friend, for my eyes are accustomed to the darkness. Listen: walk straight forward good;

"My friend, I have been here for thirty months, standing up, unable to sit downBut you, who are you?"

"I am Rinaldo, prince of the Cam pagna, the chief of fourandtwenty brave men whom the law describes

as miscreants, whom all the ladies admire, and whom judges hang in obedience to an old habit."

"God be praised! I am saved. An honest man would have been afraid, whereas I am sure of coming to an

"Yes, files, pincersCorpo di Bacco! I came to borrow the treas ures of the Bracciani on a long loan."

"You will earn a handsome share of them very legitimately, my good Rinaldo, and we may possibly go man

"Listen to me, Rinaldo. I will say nothing of the craving for vengeance that gnaws at my heart. I have been

derstand me! Alas, my friend, my fatigue and my horrible incarcera tion are nothing in comparison with the

rage that devours my soul. The Duchess of Bracciano is still one of the most beautiful women in Rome. I

"My jealousy was roused by the Duchess' conduct," the Duke went on. "The event proved me right. A young

Frenchman fell in love with Olympia, and she loved him. I had proofs of their reciprocal affection

"Pray excuse me, ladies," said Lousteau, "but I find it impossible to go on without remarking to you how

direct this Empire literature is, going to the point without any details, a characteristic, as it seems to me, of a

primitive time. The literature of that period holds a place between the summaries of chapters in

Telemaque and the categorical reports of a public office. It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it

was so scornful! It was observant, but would not communicate its observations to any one, it was so miserly!

Nobody but Fouche ever mentioned what he had observed. 'At that time,' to quote the words of one of the

most imbecile critics in the Revue des Deux Mondes, 'literature was content with a clear sketch and the simple

outline of all antique statues. It did not dance over its periods.'I should think not! It had no periods to

dance over. It had no words to play with. You were plainly told that Lubin loved Toinette; that Toinette did

not love Lubin; that Lubin killed Toinette and the police caught Lubin, who was put in prison, tried at the

assizes, and guillotined.A strong sketch, a clear outline! What a noble drama! Well, in these days the

[*] The rendering given above is only intended to link the various speeches into coherence; it has no

Literally: "And sometimes the dead.""Ah, are those the airs you assume?"the play on the insertion of

"Nowadays," Lousteau went on, "a novelist draws characters, and instead of a 'simple outline,' he unveils the

"For my part, I am alarmed at the progress of public knowledge in the matter of literature," said Bianchon.

"Like the Russians, beaten by Charles XII., who at least learned the art of war, the reader has learned the art

of writing. Formerly all that was expected of a romance was that it should be interesting. As to style, no one

cared for that, not even the author; as to ideaszero; as to local color non est. By degrees the reader has

demanded style, interest, pathos, and complete information; he insists on the five literary senses Invention,

Style, Thought, Learning, and Feeling. Then some criticism commenting on everything. The critic, incapable

of inventing anything but calumny, pronounces every work that proceeds from a not perfect brain to be

deformed. Some magicians, as Walter Scott, for instance, having appeared in the world, who combined all the

five literary senses, such writers as had but onewit or learning, style or feeling these cripples, these

acephalous, maimed or purblind creaturesin a literary sensehave taken to shrieking that all is lost, and

have preached a crusade against men who were spoiling the business, or have denounced their works."

"For pity's sake, come back to the Duke of Bracciano," cried Monsieur de Clagny.

I then wished to make sure of my misfortune that I might be avenged under the protection of Providence and

the Law. The Duchess guessed my intentions. We were at war in our purposes before we fought with poison

in our hands. We tried to tempt each other to such confidence as we could not feel, I to induce her to drink a

potion, she to get posses sion of me. She was a woman, and she won the day; for women have a snare more

than we men. I fell into itI was happy; but I awoke next day in this iron cage. All through the day I

darkness of this cellar, over which is the Duchess' bedroom. At night an ingenious counterpoise acting as a

lift raised me through the floor, and I saw the Duchess in her lover's arms. She threw me a piece of bread, my

"Thus have I lived for thirty months! From this marble prison my cries can reach no ear. There is no chance

for me. I will hope no more. Indeed, the Duchess' room is at the furthest end of the palace, and when I am

carried up there none can hear my voice. Each time I see my wife she shows me the

poison I had prepared for her and her lover. I crave it for myself, but she will not let me die; she gives me

"Yes, Eccellenza, when those fools the honest men are asleep, we are wide awake."

"Oh, Rinaldo, all I possess shall be yours; we will share my treasure like brothers; I would give you

"Eccellenza, procure from the Pope an absolution in articulo mor tis. It would be of more use to me in my

"What you will. Only file through the bars of my cage and lend me your dagger. We have but little time,

quick, quick! Oh, if my teeth were but files!I have tried to eat through this iron."

"Your wife was at the fete given by the Princess Villaviciosa. She brought home her little Frenchman; she is

"Goodbye!" said Rinaldo. "Lord! How he flies up!" he added to him self as the Duke disappeared."No

But let us leave the robber for a moment to his meditations and go up, like the Duke, to the rooms in the

"Another tailpiece, a Cupid on a snail! And page 230 is blank," said the journalist. "Then there are two more

blank pages before we come to the word it is such a joy to write when one is unhappily so happy as to be a

Never had the Duchess been more lovely; she came from her bath clothed like a goddess, and on seeing

"Ah, none but a Frenchman knows how to love!" cried the Duchess. "Do you love me well to night?"

And with an impulse of love and hatewhether it was that Cardinal Borborigano had reminded her of her

husband, or that she felt un wonted passion to display, she pressed the springs and held out her arms.

"That is all," said Lousteau, "for the foreman has torn off the rest in wrapping up my proofs. But it is enough

"I cannot make head or tail of it," said Gatien Boirouge, who was the first to break the silence of the party

"By the way in which the brigand is made to speak," said Monsieur Gravier, "it is evident that the author

knew nothing of Italy. Banditti do not allow themselves such graceful conceits."

Madame Gorju came up to Bianchon, seeing him pensive, and with a glance towards her daughter

Mademoiselle Euphemie Gorju, the owner of a fairly good fortune"What a rhodomontade!" said she. "The

The Mayoress had elaborately worked up this speech, which, in her opinion, showed strong judgment.

"Well, madame, we must be lenient, we have but twenty pages out of a thousand," said Bianchon, looking at

Mademoiselle Gorju, whose figure threatened terrible things after the birth of her first child.

"Well, Monsieur de Clagny," said Lousteau, "we were talking yesterday of the forms of revenge invented by

"I say," replied the Public Prosecutor, "that the romance is not by a Councillor of State, but by a woman. For

extravagant inventions the imagination of women far outdoes that of men; witness Frankenstein by Mrs.

Shelley, Leone Leoni by George Sand, the works of Anne Radcliffe, and the Nouveau Promethee (New

Dinah looked steadily at Monsieur de Clagny, making him feel, by an expression that gave him a chill, that in

spite of the illustrious examples he had quoted, she regarded this as a reflection on Paquita la Sevillane.

"Pooh!" said little Baudraye, "the Duke of Bracciano, whom his wife puts into a cage, and to whom she

shows herself every night in the arms of her lover, will kill herand do you call that revenge?Our laws

"Why, the woman is left to live on a small allowance, the world turns its back on her, she has no more finery,

and no respect paid herthe two things which, in my opinion, are the sumtotal of woman," said the little

"No," said the master of the house, lighting his candle to go to bed, "for she has a lover."

"For a man who thinks of nothing but his vinestocks and poles, he has some spunk," said Lousteau.

Madame de la Baudraye, the only person who could hear Bianchon's remark, laughed so knowingly, and at

the same time so bitterly, that the physician could guess the mystery of this woman's life; her premature

But Dinah did not guess, on her part, the ominous prophecy contained for her in her husband's little speech,

which her kind old Abbe Duret, if he had been alive, would not have failed to elucidate. Little La Baudraye

had detected in Dinah's eyes, when she glanced at the journalist returning the ball of his jests, that swift and

luminous flash of tenderness which gilds the gleam of a woman's eye when prudence is cast to the winds, and

she is fairly carried away. Dinah paid no more heed to her husband's hint to her to observe the proprieties

than Lousteau had done to Dinah's significant warnings on the day of his arrival.

Any other man than Bianchon would have been surprised at Lousteau's immediate success; but he was so

much the doctor, that he was not even nettled at Dinah's marked preference for the newspaperrather than the

prescriptionwriter! In fact, Dinah, herself famous, was naturally more alive to wit than to fame. Love

generally prefers contrast to similitude. Everything was against the physicianhis frankness, his simplicity,

and his profession. And this is why: Women who want to loveand Dinah wanted to love as much as to be

lovedhave an instinctive aversion for men who are devoted to an absorbing occupation; in spite of

superiority, they are all women in the matter of encroachment. Lousteau, a poet and journalist, and a libertine

with a veneer of misanthropy, had that tinsel of the intellect, and led the halfidle life that attracts women.

The blunt good sense and keen insight of the really great man weighed upon Dinah, who would not confess

her own smallness even to herself. She said in her mind"The doctor is perhaps the better man, but I do not

Then, again, she reflected on his professional duties, wondering whether a woman could ever be anything but

a subject to a medical man, who saw so many subjects in the course of a day's work. The first sentence of the

aphorism written by Bianchon in her album was a medical observation striking so directly at woman, that

Dinah could not fail to be hit by it. And then Bianchon was leaving on the morrow; his practice required his

return. What woman, short of having Cupid's mythological dart in her heart, could decide in so short a time?

These little things, which lead to such great catastropheshaving been seen in a mass by Bianchon, he

pronounced the verdict he had come to as to Madame de la Baudraye in a few words to Lousteau, to the

While the two friends stood talking together, a storm was gathering in the Sancerre circle, who could not in

the least understand Lousteau's paraphrases and commentaries, and who vented it on their hostess. Far from

finding in his talk the romance which the Public Prosecutor, the Sousprefet, the Presiding Judge, and his

deputy, Lebas, had discovered thereto say nothing of Monsieur de la Baudraye and Dinah the ladies

now gathered round the teatable, took the matter as a practical joke, and accused the Muse of Sancerre of

having a finger in it. They had all looked forward to a delightful evening, and had all strained in vain every

faculty of their mind. Nothing makes provincial folks so angry as the notion of having been a laughingstock

Madame Piedefer left the table to say to her daughter, "Do go and talk to the ladies; they are quite annoyed by

Lousteau could not fail to see Dinah's great superiority over the best women of Sancerre; she was better

dressed, her movements were graceful, her complexion was exquisitely white by candlelightin short, she

stood out against this background of old faces, shy and illdressed girls, like a queen in the midst of her

court. Visions of Paris faded from his brain; Lousteau was accepting the provincial surroundings; and while

he had too much imagination to remain unimpressed by the royal splendor of this chateau, the beautiful

carvings, and the antique beauty of the rooms, he had also too much experience to overlook the value of the

personality which completed this gem of the Renaissance. So by the time the visitors from Sancerre had taken

their leave one by onefor they had an hour's drive before themwhen no one remained in the

drawingroom but Monsieur de Clagny, Monsieur Lebas, Gatien, and Monsieur Gravier, who were all to

sleep at Anzythe journalist had already changed his mind about Dinah. His opinion had gone through the

evolution that Madame de la Baudraye had so audaciously prophesied at their first meeting.

"Ah, what things they will say about us on the drive home!" cried the mistress of the house, as she returned to

the drawingroom after seeing the President and the Presidente to their carriage with Madame and

The rest of the evening had its pleasant side. In the intimacy of a small party each one brought to the

conversation his contribution of epigrams on the figure the visitors from Sancerre had cut during Lousteau's

"My dear fellow," said Bianchon to Lousteau as they went to bedthey had an enormous room with two

"It is quite natural. You are supposed here to have had many mistresses in Paris; and to a woman there is

something indescribably inviting in a man whom other women favorsomething attractive and fascinating;

is it that she prides herself on being longer remembered than all the rest? that she appeals to his experience, as

a sick man will pay more to a famous physician? or that she is flattered by the revival of a worldworn

"Vanity and the senses count for so much in love affairs," said Lousteau, "that there may be some truth in all

those hypotheses. However, if I remain, it will be in consequence of the certificate of innocence, without

"Love will make her beautiful," said the doctor. "And, after all, she will be a rich widow some day or other!

And a child would secure her the lifeinterest in the Master of La Baudraye's fortune"

"Why, it is quite an act of virtue to make love to her," said Lousteau, rolling himself up in the bedclothes,

On the following day, Madame de la Baudraye, to whom her husband had six months since given a pair of

horses, which he also used in the fields, and an old carriage that rattled on the road, decided that she would

take Bianchon so far on his way as Cosne, where he would get into the Lyons diligence as it passed through.

She also took her mother and Lousteau, but she intended to drop her mother at La Baudraye, to go on to

Cosne with the two Parisians, and return alone with Etienne. She was elegantly dressed, as the journalist at

once perceivedbronze kid boots, gray silk stockings, a muslin dress, a green silk scarf with shaded fringe at

the ends, and a pretty black lace bonnet with flowers in it. As to Lousteau, the wretch had assumed his

warpaintpatent leather boots, trousers of English kerseymere with pleats in front, a very open waistcoat

showing a particularly fine shirt and the black brocade waterfall of his handsome cravat, and a very thin, very

Monsieur de Clagny and Monsieur Gravier looked at each other, feeling rather silly as they beheld the two

Parisians in the carriage, while they, like two simpletons, were left standing at the foot of the steps. Monsieur

de la Baudraye, who stood at the top waving his little hand in a little farewell to the doctor, could not forbear

At this juncture, Gatien, riding Monsieur de la Baudraye's quiet little mare, came out of the side road from the

"What a bore!" cried Dinah as she saw Gatien. "In thirteen yearsfor I have been married nearly thirteen

"Married, madame?" said the journalist with a smile. "You remind me of a saying of Michaud'she was so

witty! He was setting out for the Holy Land, and his friends were remonstrating with him, urging his age, and

the perils of such an expedition. 'And then,' said one, 'you are married.''Married!' said he, 'so little married.'

"I should not be surprised to see Monsieur de Clagny mounted on my pony to complete the escort," said

"Well, if the Public Prosecutor does not pursue us, you can get rid of this little fellow at Sancerre. Bianchon

must, of course, have left something behind on his tablethe notes for the first lecture of his courseand

This simple little plot put Madame de la Baudraye into high spirits. From the road between Anzy to Sancerre,

a glorious landscape frequently comes into view, of the noble stretches of the Loire, looking like a lake, and it

was got over very pleasantly, for Dinah was happy in finding herself well understood. Love was discussed in

theory, a subject allowing lovers in petto to take the measure, as it were, of each other's heart. The journalist

took a tone of refined corruption to prove that love obeys no law, that the character of the lovers gives infinite

variety to its incidents, that the circumstances of social life add to the multiplicity of its manifestations, that in

love all is possible and true, and that any given woman, after resisting every temptation and the seductions of

the most passionate lover, may be carried off her feet in the course of a few hours by a fancy, an internal

"Why," said he, "is not that the key to all the adventures we have talked over these three days past?"

For these three days, indeed, Dinah's lively imagination had been full of the most insidious romances, and the

conversation of the two Parisians had affected the woman as the most mischievous reading might have done.

Lousteau watched the effects of this clever manoeuvre, to seize the moment when his prey, whose readiness

to be caught was hidden under the abstraction caused by irresolution, should be quite dizzy.

Dinah wished to show La Baudraye to her two visitors, and the farce was duly played out of remembering the

papers left by Bianchon in his room at Anzy. Gatien flew off at a gallop to obey his sovereign; Madame

Piedefer went to do some shopping in Sancerre; and Dinah went on to Cosne alone with the two friends.

Lousteau took his seat by the lady, Bianchon riding backwards. The two friends talked affectionately and

with deep compassion for the fate of this choice nature so ill understood and in the midst of such vulgar

surroundings. Bianchon served Lousteau well by making fun of the Public Prosecutor, of Monsieur Gravier,

and of Gatien; there was a tone of such genuine contempt in his remarks, that Madame de la Baudraye dared

"I perfectly understand the position you have maintained," said the doctor as they crossed the Loire. "You

were inaccessible excepting to that brainlove which often leads to heartlove; and not one of those men, it is

very certain, is capable of disguising what, at an early stage of life, is disgusting to the senses in the eyes of a

"Indispensable!" cried Dinah, looking curiously at the doctor. "Do you mean that you prescribe love to me?"

"If you go on living as you live now, in three years you will be hideous," replied Bianchon in a dictatorial

"Forgive my friend," said Lousteau, half jestingly. "He is always the medical man, and to him love is merely

a question of hygiene. But he is quite disinterestedit is for your sake only that he speaksas is evident,

At Cosne a little crowd gathered round the old repainted chaise, with the arms on the panels granted by Louis

XIV. to the new La Baudraye. Gules, a pair of scales or; on a chief azure (color on color) three

crosscrosslets argent. For supporters two greyhounds argent, collared azure, chained or. The ironical motto,

Deo sic patet fides et hominibus, had been inflicted on the converted Calvinist by Hozier the satirical.

"Let us get out; they will come and find us," said the Baroness, desiring her coachman to keep watch.

Dinah took Bianchon's arm, and the doctor set off by the banks of the Loire at so rapid a pace that the

journalist had to linger behind. The physician had explained by a single wink that he meant to do Lousteau a

"You have been attracted by Etienne," said Bianchon to Dinah; "he has appealed strongly to your

imagination; last night we were talking about you.He loves you. But he is frivolous, and difficult to hold;

his poverty compels him to live in Paris, while everything condemns you to live at Sancerre.Take a lofty

view of life. Make Lousteau your friend; do not ask too much of him; he will come three times a year to

spend a few days with you, and you will owe to him your beauty, happiness, and fortune. Monsieur de la

Baudraye may live to be a hundred; but he might die in a few days if he should leave off the flannel

windingsheet in which he swathes himself. So run no risks, be prudent both of you.Say not a workI

Madame de la Baudraye was defenceless under this serried attack, and in the presence of a man who spoke at

"Indeed!" said she. "Can you suppose that any woman would care to compete with a journalist's

mistresses?Monsieur Lousteau strikes me as agreeable and witty; but he is blase, etc., etc."

Dinah had turned back, and was obliged to check the flow of words by which she tried to disguise her

intentions; for Etienne, who seemed to be studying progress in Cosne, was coming to meet them.

"Believe me," said Bianchon, "what he wants is to be truly loved; and if he alters his course of life, it will be

Dinah's coachman hurried up breathlessly to say that the diligence had come in, and they walked on quickly,

"Goodbye, my children!" said Bianchon, before they got into the town, "you have my blessing!"

He released Madame de la Baudraye's hand from his arm, and allowed Lousteau to draw it into his, with a

tender look, as he pressed it to his heart. What a difference to Dinah! Etienne's arm thrilled her deeply.

Bianchon's had not stirred her in the least. She and the journalist exchanged one of those glowing looks that

"Only provincial women wear muslin gowns in these days," thought Lousteau to himself, "the only stuff

which shows every crease. This woman, who has chosen me for her lover, will make a fuss over her frock! If

she had but put on a foulard skirt, I should be happy.What is the meaning of these difficulties"

While Lousteau was wondering whether Dinah had put on a muslin gown on purpose to protect herself by an

insuperable obstacle, Bianchon, with the help of the coachman, was seeing his luggage piled on the diligence.

"Go home, Madame la Baronne, leave me hereGatien will be coming," he added in an undertone. "It is

When the journalist and Madame de la Baudraye, side by side in the rickety old chaise, had recrossed the

Loire, they both were unready to speak. In these circumstances, the first words that break the silence are full

Victory might gratify Lousteau, but defeat could cause him no grief. This indifference was the secret of his

audacity. He took Madame de la Baudraye's hand as he spoke these decisive words, and pressed it in both his;

"Yes, I am as good as an actress or a grisette," she said in a voice that trembled, though she spoke lightly.

"But can you suppose that a woman who, in spite of her absurdities, has some intelligence, will have reserved

the best treasures of her heart for a man who will regard her merely as a transient pleasure?I am not

surprised to hear from your lips the words which so many men have said to mebut"

"I love you, I will have you, you shall be mine, for I have never felt for any woman the passion I have for

"At least you must seem to have been assaulted to save my honor," said the Parisian, to whom the fatal

Before Gatien had reached the end of the bridge, the outrageous journalist had crumpled up Madame de la

Baudraye's muslin dress to such an effect that she was absolutely not presentable.

But Gatien now rode up with the vehemence of a duped lover. To regain a little of Madame de la Baudraye's

esteem, Lousteau did his best to hide the tumbled dress from Gatien's eyes by leaning out of the chaise to

"Go back to our inn," said he, "there is still time; the diligence does not start for half an hour. The papers are

on the table of the room Bianchon was in; he wants them particularly, for he will be lost without his notes for

"Pray go, Gatien," said Dinah to her young adorer, with an imperious glance. And the boy thus commanded

"Go quickly to La Baudraye," cried Lousteau to the coachman. "Madame is not wellYour mother only will

"You call such infamous conduct a trick?" cried Madame de la Baudraye, swallowing down a few tears that

She leaned back in the corner of the chaise, crossed her arms, and gazed out at the Loire and the landscape, at

anything rather than at Lousteau. The journalist put on his most ingratiating tone, and talked till they reached

La Baudraye, where Dinah fled indoors, trying not to be seen by any one. In her agitation she threw herself

"If I am an object of horror to you, of aversion or scorn, I will go," said Lousteau, who had followed her. And

"Give your daughter another dress at once," said the audacious Parisian in the prim old lady's ear.

Hearing the mad gallop of Gatien's horse, Madame de la Baudraye fled to her bedroom, followed by her

"There are no papers at the inn," said Gatien to Lousteau, who went out to meet him.

"Quite so," replied Lousteau. "Madame de la Baudraye was greatly annoyed by your choosing to follow her

without being invited. Believe me, to bore a woman is a bad way of courting her. Dinah has played you a

trick, and you have given her a laugh; it is more than any of you has done in these thirteen years past. You

owe that success to Bianchon, for your cousin was the author of the Farce of the 'Manuscript.'Will the

horse get over it?" asked Lousteau with a laugh, while Gatien was wondering whether to be angry or not.

At this moment Madame de la Baudraye came in, dressed in a velvet gown, and accompanied by her mother,

who shot angry flashes at Lousteau. It would have been too rash for Dinah to seem cold or severe to Lousteau

in Gatien's presence; and Etienne, taking advantage of this, offered his arm to the supposed Lucretia;

"Do you mean to cast off a man who has vowed to live for you?" said he, walking close beside her. "I shall

"Are you coming, mamma?" said Madame de la Baudraye to Madame Piedefer, thus avoiding a reply to the

Lousteau handed the mother into the chaise, he helped Madame de la Baudraye by gently taking her arm, and

"Madame la Baronne was chilled by the cool air off the river," replied Lousteau. "Bianchon advised her to

"Oh, yes!" cried Madame de la Baudraye, "he is highminded, full of delicate feeling"

"We were in such good spirits when we set out," said Lousteau; "now you are overdone, and you speak to me

so bitterlywhy? Are you not accustomed to being told how handsome and how clever you are? For my

part, I say boldly, before Gatien, I give up Paris; I mean to stay at Sancerre and swell the number of your

cavalieri serventi. I feel so young again in my native district; I have quite forgotten Paris and all its

wickedness, and its bores, and its wearisome pleasures.Yes, my life seems in a way purified."

Dinah allowed Lousteau to talk without even looking at him; but at last there was a moment when this

serpent's rhodomontade was really so inspired by the effort he made to affect passion in phrases and ideas of

which the meaning, though hidden from Gatien, found a loud response in Dinah's heart, that she raised her

eyes to his. This look seemed to crown Lousteau's joy; his wit flowed more freely, and at last he made

Madame de la Baudraye laugh. When, under circumstances which so seriously compromise her pride, a

As they drove in by the spacious graveled forecourt, with its lawn in the middle, and the large vases filled

with flowers which so well set off the facade of Anzy, the journalist was saying:

"When women love, they forgive everything, even our crimes; when they do not love, they cannot forgive

anythingnot even our virtues.Do you forgive me," he added in Madame de la Baudraye's ear, and

pressing her arm to his heart with tender emphasis. And Dinah could not help smiling.

All through dinner, and for the rest of the evening, Etienne was in the most delightful spirits, inexhaustibly

cheerful; but while thus giving vent to his intoxication, he now and then fell into the dreamy abstraction of a

After coffee had been served, Madame de la Baudraye and her mother left the men to wander about the

"Did you observe that Madame de la Baudraye, after going out in a muslin gown came home in a velvet?"

"As she got into the carriage at Cosne, the muslin dress caught on a brass nail and was torn all the way

"Oh!" exclaimed Gatien, stricken to the heart by hearing two such different explanations.

The journalist, who understood, took Gatien by the arm and pressed it as a hint to him to be silent. A few

minutes later Etienne left Dinah's three adorers and took possession of little La Baudraye. Then Gatien was

crossquestioned as to the events of the day. Monsieur Gravier and Monsieur de Clagny were dismayed to

hear that on the return from Cosne Lousteau had been alone with Dinah, and even more so on hearing the two

versions explaining the lady's change of dress. And the three discomfited gentlemen were in a very awkward

Next day each, on various business, was obliged to leave Anzy; Dinah remained with her mother, Lousteau,

and her husband. The annoyance vented by the three victims gave rise to an organized rebellion in Sancerre.

The surrender of the Muse of Le Berry, of the Nivernais, and of Morvan was the cause of a perfect hue and

cry of slander, evil report, and various guesses in which the story of the muslin gown held a prominent place.

No dress Dinah had ever worn had been so much commented on, or was half as interesting to the girls, who

could not conceive what the connection might be, that made the married women laugh, between love and a

The Presidente Boirouge, furious at her son's discomfiture, forgot the praise she had lavished on the poem of

Paquita, and fulminated terrific condemnation on the woman who could publish such a disgraceful work.

"The wretched woman commits every crime she writes about," said she. "Perhaps she will come to the same

Dinah's fate among the good folks of Sancerre was like that of Marechal Soult in the opposition newspapers;

as long as he is minister he lost the battle of Toulouse; whenever he is out of the Government he won it!

While she was virtuous, Dinah was a match for Camille de Maupin, a rival of the most famous women; but as

Monsieur de Clagny was her valiant champion; he went several times to the Chateau d'Anzy to acquire the

right to contradict the rumors current as to the woman he still faithfully adored, even in her fall; and he

maintained that she and Lousteau were engaged together on some great work. But the lawyer was laughed to

The month of October was lovely; autumn is the finest season in the valley of the Loire; but in 1836 it was

unusually glorious. Nature seemed to aid and abet Dinah, who, as Bianchon had predicted, gradually

developed a heartfelt passion. In one month she was an altered woman. She was surprised to find in herself

so many inert and dormant qualities, hitherto in abeyance. To her Lousteau seemed an angel; for heartlove,

the crowning need of a great nature, had made a new woman of her. Dinah was alive! She had found an outlet

for her powers, she saw undreamedof vistas in the futurein short, she was happy, happy without alarms or

Lousteau found in Madame de la Baudraye an artlessness, nay, if you will, an innocence of mind which made

her very original; there was much more of the unexpected and winning in her than in a girl. Lousteau was

quite alive to a form of flattery which in most women is assumed, but which in Dinah was genuine; she really

learned from him the ways of love; he really was the first to reign in her heart. And, indeed, he took the

Men, like women, have a stock in hand of recitatives, of cantabile, of nocturnes, airs and refrainsshall we

say of recipes, although we speak of lovewhich each one believes to be exclusively his own. Men who

have reached Lousteau's age try to distribute the "movements" of this repertoire through the whole opera of a

passion. Lousteau, regarding this adventure with Dinah as a mere temporary connection, was eager to stamp

himself on her memory in indelible lines; and during that beautiful October he was prodigal of his most

entrancing melodies and most elaborate barcarolles. In fact, he exhausted every resource of the stage

management of love, to use an expression borrowed from the theatrical dictionary, and admirably descriptive

"If that woman ever forgets me!" he would sometimes say to himself as they returned together from a long

walk in the woods, "I will owe her no grudgeshe will have found something better."

When two beings have sung together all the duets of that enchanting score, and still love each other, it may be

Lousteau, however, had not time to repeat himself, for he was to leave Anzy in the early days of November.

His paper required his presence in Paris. Before breakfast, on the day before he was to leave, the journalist

and Dinah saw the master of the house come in with an artist from Nevers, who restored carvings of all kinds.

"What are you going to do?" asked Lousteau. "What is to be done to the chateau?"

"This is what I am going to do," said the little man, leading Lousteau, the local artist, and Dinah out on the

He pointed out, on the front of the building, a shield supported by two sirens, not unlike that which may be

seen on the arcade, now closed, through which there used to be a passage from the Quai des Tuileries to the

courtyard of the old Louvre, and over which the words may still be seen, "Bibliotheque du Cabinet du Roi."

This shield bore the arms of the noble House of Uxelles, namely, Or and gules party per fess, with two lions

or, dexter and sinister as supporters. Above, a knight's helm, mantled of the tincture of the shield, and

"I want to put my own coat of arms in the place of that of the Uxelles; and as they are repeated six times on

"Oh!" said the old man, "Madame de la Baudraye is still young; there is no time lost."

This allusion made Lousteau smile; he did not understand Monsieur de la Baudraye.

Dinah begged him to give her one day more, and the lovers parted after the manner of certain theatres, which

give ten last performances of a piece that is paying. And how many promises they made! How many solemn

Dinah, with superiority of the Superior Woman, accompanied Lousteau, in the face of all the world, as far as

Cosne, with her mother and little La Baudraye. When, ten days later, Madame de la Baudraye saw in her

drawingroom at La Baudraye, Monsieur de Clagny, Gatien, and Gravier, she found an opportunity of saying

"I owe it to Monsieur Lousteau that I discovered that I had not been loved for my own sake."

And what noble speeches she uttered, on man, on the nature of his feelings, on the end of his base passions,

and so forth. Of Dinah's three worshipers, Monsieur de Clagny only said to her: "I love you, come what

may"and Dinah accepted him as her confidant, lavished on him all the marks of friendship which women

can devise for the Gurths who are ready thus to wear the collar of gilded slavery.

In Paris once more, Lousteau had, in a few weeks, lost the impression of the happy time he had spent at the

In this century, especially since the triumph of the bourgeoisie the commonplace, moneysaving

citizenwho takes good care not to imitate Francis I. or Louis XIV.to live by the pen is a form of penal

servitude to which a galleyslave would prefer death. To live by the pen means to createto create today,

and tomorrow, and incessantlyor to seem to create; and the imitation costs as dear as the reality. So,

besides his daily contribution to a newspaper, which was like the stone of Sisyphus, and which came every

Monday, crashing down on to the feather of his pen, Etienne worked for three or four literary magazines.

Still, do not be alarmed; he put no artistic conscientiousness into his work. This man of Sancerre had a

facility, a carelessness, if you call it so, which ranked him with those writers who are mere scriveners, literary

hacks. In Paris, in our day, hack work cuts a man off from every pretension to a literary position. When he

can do no more, or no longer cares for advancement, the man who can write becomes a journalist and a hack.

The life he leads is not unpleasing. Bluestockings, beginners in every walk of life, actresses at the outset or

the close of a career, publishers and authors, all make much of these writers of the ready pen. Lousteau, a

thorough man about town, lived at scarcely any expense beyond paying his rent. He had boxes at all the

theatres; the sale of the books he reviewed or left unreviewed paid for his gloves; and he would say to those

authors who published at their own expense, "I have your book always in my hands!" He took toll from

vanity in the form of drawings or pictures. Every day had its engagements to dinner, every night its theatre,

every morning was filled up with callers, visits, and lounging. His serial in the paper, two novels a year for

weekly magazines, and his miscellaneous articles were the tax he paid for this easygoing life. And yet, to

At the present time, known to the literary world, liked for the good or the mischief he did with equally facile

good humor, he let himself float with the stream, never caring for the future. He ruled a little set of

newcomers, he had friendshipsor rather, habits of fifteen years' standing, and men with whom he supped,

and dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a month, a sum which he

found quite insufficient for the prodigality peculiar to the impecunious. Indeed, Lousteau found himself now

just as hard up as when, on first appearing in Paris, he had said to himself, "If I had but five hundred francs a

The cause of this phenomenon was as follows: Lousteau lived in the Rue des Martyrs in pretty groundfloor

rooms with a garden, and splendidly furnished. When he settled there in 1833 he had come to an agreement

with an upholsterer that kept his pocket money low for a long time. These rooms were let for twelve hundred

francs. The months of January, April, July, and October were, as he phrased it, his indigent months. The rent

and the porter's account cleaned him out. Lousteau took no fewer hackney cabs, spend a hundred francs in

breakfasts all the same, smoked thirty francs' worth of cigars, and could never refuse the mistress of a day a

dinner or a new dress. He thus dipped so deeply into the fluctuating earnings of the following months, that he

could no more find a hundred francs on his chimneypiece now, when he was making seven or eight hundred

Tired, sometimes, by the incessant vicissitudes of a literary life, and as much bored by amusement as a

courtesan, Lousteau would get out of the tideway and sit on the bank, and say to one and another of his

intimate alliesNathan or Bixiou, as they sat smoking in his scrap of garden, looking out on an evergreen

"Lord! we shall marry when we choose to give as much thought to the matter as we give to a drama or a

"Oh, we all have a Florine," said Etienne, flinging away the end of his cigar and thinking of Madame

Madame Schontz was a pretty enough woman to put a very high price on the interest on her beauty, while

reserving absolute ownership for Lousteau, the man of her heart. Like all those women who get the name in

Paris of Lorettes, from the Church of Notre Dame de Lorette, round about which they dwell, she lived in the

Rue Flechier, a stone's throw from Lousteau. This lady took a pride and delight in teasing her friends by

These details of Lousteau's life and fortune are indispensable, for this penury and this bohemian existence of

a man to whom Parisian luxury had become a necessity, were fated to have a cruel influence on Dinah's life.

Those to whom the bohemia of Paris is familiar will now understand how it was that, by the end of a

fortnight, the journalist, up to his ears in the literary environment, could laugh about his Baroness with his

friends and even with Madame Schontz. To such readers as regard such things as utterly mean, it is almost

"I did good service to three worthy provincialsa ReceiverGeneral of Taxes, a little cousin of his, and a

Public Prosecutor, who for ten years had been dancing round and round one of the hundred 'Tenth Muses'

who adorn the Departments," said he. "But they had no more dared to touch her than we touch a decorated

"Poor boy!" said Bixiou. "I said you had gone to Sancerre to turn Pegasus out to grass."

"Your joke is as stupid as my Muse is handsome," retorted Lousteau. "Ask Bianchon, my dear fellow."

" 'Beloved friend, idol of my heart and soul' twenty pages of it! all at one sitting, and dated midnight!

" 'I dare not ask you to write to me as I write, every day; still, I hope to have a few lines from my dear one

every week, to relieve my mind.'What a pity to burn it all! it is really well written," said Lousteau to

himself, as he threw the ten sheets of paper into the fire after having read them. "That woman was born to

Lousteau was not much afraid of Madame Schontz, who really loved him for himself, but he had supplanted a

friend in the heart of a Marquise. This Marquise, a lady nowise coy, sometimes dropped in unexpectedly at

his rooms in the evening, arriving veiled in a hackney coach; and she, as a literary woman, allowed herself to

A week later, Lousteau, who hardly remembered Dinah, was startled by another budget from

Sancerreeight leaves, sixteen pages! He heard a woman's step; he thought it announced a search from the

Marquise, and tossed these rapturous and entrancing proofs of affections into the fireunread!

"A woman's letter!" exclaimed Madame Schontz, as she came in. "The paper, the wax, are scented"

"Here you are, sir," said a porter from the coach office, setting down two huge hampers in the anteroom.

"Your Tenth Muse is a remarkably intelligent woman," said the courtesan, opening one of the hampers, while

Lousteau was writing his name. "I like a Muse who understands housekeeping, and who can make game pies

as well as blots. And, oh! what beautiful flowers!" she went on, opening the second hamper. "Why, you could

get none finer in Paris!And here, and here! A hare, partridges, half a roebuck!We will ask your friends

and have a famous dinner, for Athalie has a special talent for dressing venison."

Lousteau wrote to Dinah; but instead of writing from the heart, he was clever. The letter was all the more

insidious; it was like one of Mirabeau's letters to Sophie. The style of a true lover is transparent. It is a clear

stream which allows the bottom of the heart to be seen between two banks, bright with the trifles of existence,

and covered with the flowers of the soul that blossom afresh every day, full of intoxicating beautybut only

for two beings. As soon as a love letter has any charm for a third reader, it is beyond doubt the product of the

head, not of the heart. But a woman will always be beguiled; she always believes herself to be the

By the end of December Lousteau had ceased to read Dinah's letters; they lay in a heap in a drawer of his

Then one of those chances came to Lousteau which such bohemians ought to clutch by every hair. In the

middle of December, Madame Schontz, who took a real interest in Etienne, sent to beg him to call on her one

"When I say marrying, I mean marrying well. You have no prejudices: I need not mince matters. This is the

position: A young lady has got into trouble; her mother knows nothing of even a kiss. Her father is an honest

notary, a man of honor; he has been wise enough to keep it dark. He wants to get his daughter married within

a fortnight, and he will give her a fortune of a hundred and fifty thousand francsfor he has three other

children; butand it is not a bad ideahe will add a hundred thousand francs, under the rose, hand to hand,

to cover the damages. They are an old family of Paris citizens, Rue des Lombards"

"What a romance! Such things are nowhere to be heard of but in the Rue des Lombards."

"But do not take it into your head that a jealous brother murdered the seducer. The young man died in the

most commonplace way of a pleurisy caught as he came out of the theatre. A headclerk and penniless, the

man entrapped the daughter in order to marry into the businessA judgment from heaven, I call it!"

"What, Cardot, the son of that little old man in hairpowder, Florentine's first friend?"

"Just so. Malaga, whose 'fancy' is a little tomtit of a fiddler of eighteen, cannot in conscience make such a boy

marry the girl. Besides, she has no cause to do him an ill turn.Indeed, Monsieur Cardot wants a man of

thirty at least. Our notary, I feel sure, will be proud to have a famous man for his soninlaw. So just feel

yourself all over.You will pay your debts, you will have twelve thousand francs a year, and be a father

without any trouble on your part; what do you say to that to the good? And, after all, you only marry a very

consolable widow. There is an income of fifty thousand francs in the house, and the value of the connection,

so in due time you may look forward to not less than fifteen thousand francs a year more for your share, and

you will enter a family holding a fine political position; Cardot is the brotherinlaw of old Camusot, the

"Yes," said Lousteau, "old Camusot married little Daddy Cardot's eldest daughter, and they had high times

Chiffrevillemanufacturers of chemical products, the aristocracy of these days! Potash, I tell you! Still, this

is the unpleasant side of the matter. You will have a terrible motherinlaw, a woman capable of killing her

daughter if she knew! This Cardot woman is a bigot; she has lips like two faded narrow pink ribbons.

"A man of the town like you would never pass muster with that woman, who, in her wellmeaning way, will

spy out your bachelor life and know every fact of the past. However, Cardot says he means to exert his

paternal authority. The poor man will be obliged to do the civil to his wife for some days; a woman made of

wood, my dear fellow; Malaga, who has seen her, calls her a penitential scrubber. Cardot is a man of forty; he

will be mayor of his district, and perhaps be elected deputy. He is prepared to give in lieu of the hundred

thousand francs a nice little house in the Rue SaintLazare, with a forecourt and a garden, which cost him no

more than sixty thousand at the time of the July overthrow; he would sell, and that would be an opportunity

for you to go and come at the house, to see the daughter, and be civil to the mother.And it would give you

a look of property in Madame Cardot's eyes. You would be housed like a prince in that little mansion. Then,

by Camusot's interest, you may get an appointment as librarian to some public office where there is no

library.Well, and then if you invest your money in backing up a newspaper, you will get ten thousand

francs a year on it, you can earn six, your librarianship will bring you in four.Can you do better for

"If you were to marry a lamb without spot, it might be a light woman by the end of two years. What is the

"Take my word for it, you can do no better than come to dine with Malaga tomorrow. You will meet your

fatherinlaw; he will know the secret has been let outby Malaga, with whom he cannot be angryand

then you are master of the situation. As to your wife!Why her misconduct leaves you as free as a

"I love you for your own sake, that is alland I can reason. Well! why do you stand there like a wax image

of AbdelKader? There is nothing to meditate over. Marriage is heads or tailswell, you have tossed heads

Lousteau spent the evening in writing a long letter to the Marquise, giving her the reasons which compelled

him to marry; his constant poverty, the torpor of his imagination, his white hairs, his moral and physical

exhaustionin short, four pages of arguments."As to Dinah, I will send her a circular announcing the

marriage," said he to himself. "As Bixiou says, I have not my match for knowing how to dock the tail of a

Lousteau, who at first had been on some ceremony with himself, by next day had come to the point of

dreading lest the marriage should not come off. He was pressingly civil to the notary.

"I knew monsieur your father," said he, "at Florentine's, so I may well know you here, at Mademoiselle

Turquet's. Like father, like son. A very good fellow and a philosopher, was little Daddy Cardotexcuse me,

we always called him so. At that time, Florine, Florentine, Tullia, Coralie, and Mariette were the five fingers

of your hand, so to speakit is fifteen years ago. My follies, as you may suppose, are a thing of the

past.In those days it was pleasure that ran away with me; now I am ambitious; but, in our day, to get on at

all a man must be free from debt, have a good income, a wife, and a family. If I pay taxes enough to qualify

Maitre Cardot appreciated this profession of faith. Lousteau had laid himself out to please and the notary

liked him, feeling himself more at his ease, as may be easily imagined, with a man who had known his

father's secrets than he would have been with another. On the following day Lousteau was introduced to the

Cardot family as the purchaser of the house in the Rue SaintLazare, and three days later he dined there.

Cardot lived in an old house near the Place du Chatelet. In this house everything was "good." Economy

covered every scrap of gilding with green gauze; all the furniture wore holland covers. Though it was

impossible to feel a shade of uneasiness as to the wealth of the inhabitants, at the end of half an hour no one

could suppress a yawn. Boredom perched in every nook; the curtains hung dolefully; the diningroom was

like Harpagon's. Even if Lousteau had not known all about Malaga, he could have guessed that the notary's

The journalist saw a tall, fair girl with blue eyes, at once shy and languishing. The elder brother took a fancy

to him; he was the fourth clerk in the office, but strongly attracted by the snares of literary fame, though

destined to succeed his father. The younger sister was twelve years old. Lousteau, assuming a little Jesuitical

air, played the Monarchist and Churchman for the benefit of the mother, was quite smooth, deliberate, and

Within three weeks of their introduction, at his fourth dinner there, Felicie Cardot, who had been watching

Lousteau out of the corner of her eye, carried him a cup of coffee where he stood in the window recess, and

"I will devote my whole life, monsieur, to thanking you for your sacrifice in favor of a poor girl"

Lousteau was touched; there was so much expression in her look, her accent, her attitude. "She would make a

Madame Cardot looked upon her soninlaw as a man with a future before him; but, above all the fine

qualities she ascribed to him, she was most delighted by his high tone of morals. Etienne, prompted by the

wily notary, had pledged his word that he had no natural children, no tie that could endanger the happiness of

"You may perhaps think I go rather too far," said the bigot to the journalist; "but in giving such a jewel as my

Felicie to any man, one must think of the future. I am not one of those mothers who want to be rid of their

daughters. Monsieur Cardot hurries matters on, urges forward his daughter's marriage; he wishes it over. This

is the only point on which we differ.Though with a man like you, monsieur, a literary man whose youth

has been preserved by hard work from the moral shipwreck now so prevalent, we may feel quite safe; still,

you would be the first to laugh at me if I looked for a husband for my daughter with my eyes shut. I know

you are not an innocent, and I should be very sorry for my Felicie if you were" (this was said in a whisper);

"but if you had any liaisonFor instance, monsieur, you have heard of Madame Roguin, the wife of a notary

who, unhappily for our faculty, was sadly notorious. Madame Roguin has, ever since 1820, been kept by a

"Yes, du Tillet," replied Etienne; but he bit his tongue as he recollected how rash it was to confess to an

"Yes.Well, monsieur, if you were a mother, would you not quake at the thought that Madame du Tillet's

fate might be your child's? At her age, and nee de Granville! To have as a rival a woman of fifty and more.

Sooner would I see my daughter dead than give her to a man who had such a connection with a married

woman. A grisette, an actress, you take her and leave her.There is no danger, in my opinion, from women

of that stamp; love is their trade, they care for no one, one down and another to come on!But a woman

who has sinned against duty must hug her sin, her only excuse is constancy, if such a crime can ever have an

excuse. At least, that is the view I hold of a respectable woman's fall, and that is what makes it so

Instead of looking for the meaning of these speeches, Etienne made a jest of them at Malaga's, whither he

went with his fatherinlaw elect; for the notary and the journalist were the best of friends.

Lousteau had already given himself the airs of a person of importance; his life at last was to have a purpose;

he was in luck's way, and in a few days would be the owner of a delightful little house in the Rue

SaintLazare; he was going to be married to a charming woman, he would have about twenty thousand francs

a year, and could give the reins to his ambition; the young lady loved him, and he would be connected with

several respectable families. In short, he was in full sail on the blue waters of hope.

Madame Cardot had expressed a wish to see the prints for Gil Blas, one of the illustrated volumes which the

French publishers were at that time bringing out, and Lousteau had taken the first numbers for the lady's

inspection. The lawyer's wife had a scheme of her own, she had borrowed the book merely to return it; she

wanted an excuse for walking in on her future soninlaw quite unexpectedly. The sight of those bachelor

rooms, which her husband had described as charming, would tell her more, she thought, as to Lousteau's

habits of life than any information she could pick up. Her sisterinlaw, Madame Camusot, who knew

nothing of the fateful secret, was terrified at such a marriage for her niece. Monsieur Camusot, a Councillor

of the Supreme Court, old Camusot's son by his first marriage, had given his step mother, who was Cardot's

Lousteau, clever as he was, did not think it strange that the wife of a rich notary should wish to inspect a

volume costing fifteen francs before deciding on the purchase. Your clever man never condescends to study

the middleclass, who escape his ken by this want of attention; and while he is making game of them, they

So one day early in January 1837, Madame Cardot and her daughter took a hackney coach and went to the

Rue des Martyrs to return the parts of Gil Blas to Felicie's betrothed, both delighted at the thought of seeing

Lousteau's rooms. These domiciliary visitations are not unusual in the old citizen class. The porter at the front

gate was not in; but his daughter, on being informed by the worthy lady that she was in the presence of

Monsieur Lousteau's future motherinlaw and bride, handed over the key of the apartmentall the more

It was by this time about noon, the hour at which the journalist would return from breakfasting at the Cafe

Anglais. As he crossed the open space between the Church of NotreDame de Lorette and the Rue des

Martyrs, Lousteau happened to look at a hired coach that was toiling up the Rue du FaubourgMontmartre,

and he fancied it was a dream when he saw the face of Dinah! He stood frozen to the spot when, on reaching

"What has brought you here?" he inquired.He adopted the familiar tu. The formality of vous was out of the

"Faugh!" cried he, disregarding the barbarity of such an exclamation. "Well," thought he to himself, "she

He signed to the coachman to wait, gave his hand to Madame de la Baudraye, and left the man with the

chaise full of trunks, vowing that he would send away illico, as he said to himself, the woman and her

The child had some sense, and felt that three women must not be allowed to meet in a bachelor's rooms.

In his agitation, while Madame de la Baudraye was pouring out a flood of words, Etienne understood the

child to say, "Mother is there," the only circumstance that suggested itself as possible, and he went in.

Felicie and her mother, who were by this time in the bedroom, crept into a corner on seeing Etienne enter

"At last, Etienne, my dearest, I am yours for life!" cried Dinah, throwing her arms round his neck, and

clasping him closely, while he took the key from the outside of the door. "Life is a perpetual anguish to me in

that house at Anzy. I could bear it no longer; and when the time came for me to proclaim my

happinesswell, I had not the courage.Here I am, your wife with your child! And you have not written to

"How can I do otherwise than love you?But would you not have been wiser to remain at Sancerre?I am

"Good God! that is all very fine in words, but" Dinah sat down and melted into tears as she heard this

Lousteau could not resist this distress. He clasped the Baroness in his arms and kissed her.

"Do not cry, Didine!" said he; and, as he uttered the words, he saw in the mirror the figure of Madame

Cardot, looking at him from the further end of the rooms. "Come, Didine, go with Pamela and get your trunks

"Monsieur," said Madame Cardot, "I congratulate myself on having resolved to see for myself the home of

the man who was to have been my soninlaw. If my daughter were to die of it, she should never be the wife

of such a man as you. You must devote yourself to making your Didine happy, monsieur."

And the virtuous lady walked out, followed by Felicie, who was crying too, for she had become accustomed

to Etienne. The dreadful Madame Cardot got into her hackneycoach again, staring insolently at the hapless

Dinah, in whose heart the sting still rankled of "that is all very fine in words"; but who, nevertheless, like

Lousteau, who was not lacking in the sort of decision which grows out of the vicissitudes of a stormtossed

"Didine is highminded; when once she knows of my proposed marriage, she will sacrifice herself for my

future prospects, and I know how I can manage to let her know." Delighted at having hit on a trick of which

"Larifla, fla, fla!And Didine once out of the way," he went on, talking to himself, "I will treat Maman

Cardot to a call and a novelette: I have seduced her Felicie at SaintEustacheFelicie, guilty through

passion, bears in her bosom the pledge of our affection and larifla, fla, fla! the father Ergo, the notary, his

And, to her great amazement, Dinah discovered Etienne performing a prohibited dance.

"Your arrival and our happiness have turned my head with joy," said he, to explain this crazy mood.

"And I had fancied you had ceased to love me!" exclaimed the poor woman, dropping the handbag she was

"Make yourself at home, my darling," said Etienne, laughing in his sleeve; "I must write two lines to excuse

myself from a bachelor party, for I mean to devote myself to you. Give your orders; you are at home."

"MY DEAR BOY,My Baroness has dropped into my arms, and will be fatal to my marriage unless we

perform one of the most familiar stratagems of the thousand and one comedies at the Gymnase. I rely on you

to come here, like one of Moliere's old men, to scold your nephew Leandre for his folly, while the Tenth

Muse lies hidden in my bedroom; you must work on her feelings; strike hard, be brutal, offensive. I, you

understand, shall express my blind devotion, and shall seem to be deaf, so that you may have to shout at me.

Having sent this letter by a commissionaire to the man who, in all Paris, most delighted in such practical

jokesin the slang of artists, a "charge"Lousteau made a great show of settling the Muse of Sancerre in

his apartment. He busied himself in arranging the luggage she had brought, and informed her as to the

persons and ways of the house with such perfect good faith, and a glee which overflowed in kind words and

caresses, that Dinah believed herself the best beloved woman in the world. These rooms, where everything

Pamela Migeon, the intelligent damsel of fourteen, was questioned by the journalist as to whether she would

like to be waitingmaid to the imposing Baroness. Pamela, perfectly enchanted, entered on her duties at once,

by going off to order dinner from a restaurant on the boulevard. Dinah was able to judge of the extreme

poverty that lay hidden under the purely superficial elegance of this bachelor home when she found none of

the necessaries of life. As she took possession of the closets and drawers, she indulged in the fondest dreams;

she would alter Etienne's habits, she would make him homekeeping, she would fill his cup of domestic

The novelty of the position hid its disastrous side; Dinah regarded reciprocated love as the absolution of her

sin; she did not yet look beyond the walls of these rooms. Pamela, whose wits were as sharp as those of a

lorette, went straight to Madame Schontz to beg the loan of some plate, telling her what had happened to

Lousteau. After making the child welcome to all she had, Madame Schontz went off to her friend Malaga,

that Cardot might be warned of the catastrophe that had befallen his future soninlaw.

The journalist, not in the least uneasy about the crisis as affecting his marriage, was more and more charming

to the lady from the provinces. The dinner was the occasion of the delightful child'splay of lovers set at

liberty, and happy to be free. When they had had their coffee, and Lousteau was sitting in front of the fire,

"Go into the bedroom," said the journalist to his mistress; "I will soon get rid of him. He is one of my most

"Oh, ho! dinner for two, and a blue velvet bonnet!" cried Bixiou. "I am off.Ah! that is what comes of

marryingone must go through some partings. How rich one feels when one begins to move one's sticks,

"No? My word, what next? Are you making a fool of yourself, if you please?What!You, who, by the

mercy of Heaven, have come across twenty thousand francs a year, and a house, and a wife connected with

all the first families of the better middle classa wife, in short, out of the Rue des Lombards"

"Be off? I have a friend's privileges, and I shall take every advantage of them.What has come over you?"

"What has 'come over' me is my lady from Sancerre. She is a mother, and we are going to live together

happily to the end of our days.You would have heard it tomorrow, so you may as well be told it now."

"Many chimneypots are falling on my head, as Arnal says. But if this woman really loves you, my dear

fellow, she will go back to the place she came from. Did any provincial woman ever yet find her sealegs in

Paris? She will wound all your vanities. Have you forgotten what a provincial is? She will bore you as much

when she is happy as when she is sad; she will have as great a talent for escaping grace as a Parisian has in

"Lousteau, listen to me. That a passion should lead you to forget to some extent the times in which we live, is

conceivable; but I, my dear fellow, have not the mythological bandage over my eyes.Well, then consider

your position. For fifteen years you have been tossing in the literary world; you are no longer young, you

have padded the hoof till your soles are worn through!Yes, my boy, you turn your socks under like a street

urchin to hide the holes, so that the legs cover the heels! In short, the joke is too stale. Your excuses are more

"I may say to you, like the Regent to Cardinal Dubois, 'That is kicking enough!' " said Lousteau, laughing.

"Oh, venerable young man," replied Bixiou, "the iron has touched the sore to the quick. You are worn out,

aren't you? Well, then; in the heyday of youth, under the pressure of penury, what have you done? You are

not in the front rank, and you have not a thousand francs of your own. That is the sumtotal of the situation.

Can you, in the decline of your powers, support a family by your pen, when your wife, if she is an honest

woman, will not have at her command the resources of the woman of the streets, who can extract her

thousandfranc note from the depths where milord keeps it safe? You are rushing into the lowest depths of

"And this is only the financial side. Now, consider the political position. We are struggling in an essentially

bourgeois age, in which honor, virtue, highmindedness, talent, learninggenius, in short, is summed up in

paying your way, owing nobody anything, and conducting your affairs with judgment. Be steady, be

respectable, have a wife, and children, pay your rent and taxes, serve in the National Guard, and be on the

same pattern as all the men of your companythen you may indulge in the loftiest pretensions, rise to the

Ministry! and you have the best chances possible, since you are no Montmorency. You were preparing to

fulfil all the conditions insisted on for turning out a political personage, you are capable of every mean trick

that is necessary in office, even of pretending to be commonplaceyou would have acted it to the life. And

just for a woman, who will leave you in the lurchthe end of every eternal passionin three, five, or seven

yearsafter exhausting your last physical and intellectual powers, you turn your back on the sacred Hearth,

on the Rue des Lombards, on a political career, on thirty thousand francs per annum, on respectability and

"If you had kept a pot boiling for some actress who gave you your fun for itwell; that is what you may call

a cabinet matter. But to live with another man's wife? It is a draft at sight on disaster; it is bolting the bitter

"That will do. One word answers it all; I love Madame de la Baudraye, and prefer her to every fortune, to

every position the world can offer.I may have been carried away by a gust of ambition, but everything

"Ah, ha! you have a fancy for paternity? But, wretched man, we are the fathers only of our legitimate

children. What is a brat that does not bear your name? The last chapter of the romance.Your child will be

"Society, my dear boy, will drop upon you sooner or later. Read Adolphe once more.Dear me! I fancy I

can see you when you and she are used to each other;I see you dejected, hangdog, bereft of position and

fortune, and fighting like the shareholders of a bogus company when they are tricked by a director!Your

"But I have only just begun," said Bixiou. "Listen, my dear boy. Marriage has been out of favor for some

time past; but, apart from the advantages it offers in being the only recognized way of certifying heredity, as

it affords a goodlooking young man, though penniless, the opportunity of making his fortune in two months,

it survives in spite of disadvantages. And there is not the man living who would not repent, sooner or later, of

having, by his own fault, lost the chance of marrying thirty thousand francs a year."

"You won't understand me," cried Lousteau, in a voice of exasperation. "Go awayshe is there"

"I beg your pardon; why did you not tell me sooner?You are of age, and so is she," he added in a lower

voice, but loud enough to be heard by Dinah. "She will make you repent bitterly of your happiness!"

"Devil take those friends who think they have a right to preach to you," said Lousteau, opening the door of

the bedroom, where he found Madame de la Baudraye sunk in an armchair and dabbing her eyes with an

"Oh, why did I come here?" sobbed she. "Good Heavens, why indeed? Etienne, I am not so provincial as

"Darling angel," replied Lousteau, taking Dinah in his arms, lifting her from her chair, and dragging her half

dead into the drawingroom, "we have both pledged our future, it is sacrifice for sacrifice. While I was

loving you at Sancerre, they were engaging me to be married here, but I refused.Oh! I was extremely

"You will stay here, my Didine. All is at an end. And is this fortune so lightly earned after all? Must I not

marry a gawky, towhaired creature, with a red nose, the daughter of a notary, and saddle myself with a

"It is all over with you, my dear," said the woman. "Cardot does not mean to quarrel with his wife for the

sake of a soninlaw. The lady made a scenesomething like a scene, I can tell you! So, to conclude, the

headclerk, who was the late headclerk's deputy for two years, agrees to take the girl with the business."

"Mean wretch!" exclaimed Lousteau. "What! in two hours he has made up his mind?"

"Bless me, that is simple enough. The rascal, who knew all the dead man's little secrets, guessed what a fix

his master was in from overhearing a few words of the squabble with Madame Cardot. The notary relies on

your honor and good feeling, for the affair is settled. The clerk, whose conduct has been admirable, went so

far as to attend mass! A finished hypocrite, I sayjust suits the mamma. You and Cardot will still be friends.

He is to be a director in an immense financial concern, and he may be of use to you.So you have been

"And a mistress," said Madame Schontz, smiling. "Here you are, more than married; you will be insufferable,

you will be always wanting to get home, there will be nothing loose about you, neither your clothes nor your

habits. And, after all, my Arthur does things in style. I will be faithful to him and cut Malaga's acquaintance.

"Let me peep at her through the dooryour Sancerre Muse," she went on. "Is there no finer bird than that to

be found in the desert?" she exclaimed. "You are cheated! She is dignified, lean, lachrymose; she only needs

"What is it now?" asked Madame de la Baudraye, who had heard the rustle of a silk dress and the murmur of

"It is, my darling, that we are now indissolubly united.I have just had an answer to the letter you saw me

"Oh, I will be more than your wifeI am your slave, I give you my life," said the poor deluded creature. "I

did not believe I could love you more than I did!Now I shall not be a mere incident, but your whole life?"

Lousteau was ready to sweeten his vows with the most fascinating prettinesses. And this was why. Between

the door of the apartment where he had taken the lorette's farewell kiss, and that of the drawingroom, where

the Muse was reclining, bewildered by such a succession of shocks, Lousteau had remembered little De la

Baudraye's precarious health, his fine fortune, and Bianchon's remark about Dinah, "She will be a rich

widow!" and he said to himself, "I would a hundred times rather have Madame de la Baudraye for a wife than

His plan of action was quickly decided on; he determined to play the farce of passion once more, and to

perfection. His mean self interestedness and his false vehemence of passion had disastrous results. Madame

de la Baudraye, when she set out from Sancerre for Paris, had intended to live in rooms of her own quite near

to Lousteau; but the proofs of devotion her lover had given her by giving up such brilliant prospects, and yet

more the perfect happiness of the first days of their illicit union, kept her from mentioning such a parting. The

second day was to beand indeed wasa high festival, in which such a suggestion proposed to "her angel"

Lousteau, on his part, anxious to make Dinah feel herself dependent on him, kept her in a state of constant

intoxication by incessant amusement. These circumstances hindered two persons so clever as these were from

avoiding the slough into which they fellthat of a life in common, a piece of folly of which, unfortunately,

And thus was the whole programme played out of a provincial amour, so satirically described by Lousteau to

Madame de la Baudrayea fact which neither he nor she remembered. Passion is born a deafmute.

This winter in Paris was to Madame de la Baudraye all that the month of October had been at Sancerre.

Etienne, to initiate "his wife" into Paris life, varied this honeymoon by evenings at the play, where Dinah

would only go to the stage box. At first Madame de la Baudraye preserved some remnants of her countrified

"Monsieur de Clagny or Monsieur Gravier may have followed me to Paris." She was afraid on Sancerre even

Lousteau, who was excessively vain, educated Dinah, took her to the best dressmakers, and pointed out to her

the most fashionable women, advising her to take them as models for imitation. And Madame de la

Baudraye's provincial appearance was soon a thing of the past. Lousteau, when his friends met him, was

All through that season Etienne wrote little and got very much into debt, though Dinah, who was proud,

bought all her clothes out of her savings, and fancied she had not been the smallest expense to her beloved.

By the end of three months Dinah was acclimatized; she had reveled in the music at the Italian opera; she

knew the pieces "on" at all theatres, and the actors and jests of the day; she had become inured to this life of

perpetual excitement, this rapid torrent in which everything is forgotten. She no longer craned her neck or

stood with her nose in the air, like an image of Amazement, at the constant surprises that Paris has for a

stranger. She had learned to breathe that witty, vitalizing, teeming atmosphere where clever people feel

One morning, as she read the papers, for Lousteau had them all, two lines carried her back to Sancerre and

"Monsieur le Baron de Clagny, Public Prosecutor to the Criminal Court at Sancerre, has been appointed

Etienne and Dinah were just then at the most dazzling and fervid stage of a passion when each is perfectly

accustomed to the other, and yet love has not lost its freshness and relish. The lovers know each other well,

but all is not yet understood; they have not been a second time to the same secret haunts of the soul; they

have not studied each other till they know, as they must later, the very thought, word, and gesture that

responds to every event, the greatest and the smallest. Enchantment reigns; there are no collisions, no

differences of opinion, no cold looks. Their two souls are always on the same side. And Dinah would speak

the magical words, emphasized by the yet more magical expression and looks which every woman can use

"When you cease to love me, kill me.If you should cease to love me, I believe I could kill you first and

"All I ask of God is to see you as constant as I shall be. It is you who will desert me!"

"Supreme," echoed Lousteau. "Come, now? Suppose I am dragged away to a bachelor party, and find there

one of my former mistresses, and she makes fun of me; I, out of vanity, behave as if I were free, and do not

"A woman is only sure of being loved when she is preferred; and if you came back to me, ifOh! you make

Lousteau proposed that they should each write a letter setting forth the reasons which would compel them to

end by suicide. Once in possession of such a document, each might kill the other without danger in case of

The journalist, happy for the moment, promised himself that he would deceive Dinah when he should be tired

of her, and would sacrifice everything to the requirements of that deception. To him Madame de la Baudraye

Dinah, by consenting to this union, showed a generous mind and the power derived from selfrespect. In this

absolute intimacy, in which both lovers put off their masks, the young woman never abdicated her modesty,

her masculine rectitude, and the strength peculiar to ambitious souls, which formed the basis of her character.

Lousteau involuntarily held her in high esteem. As a Parisian, Dinah was superior to the most fascinating

courtesan; she could be as amusing and as witty as Malaga; but her extensive information, her habits of mind,

her vast reading enabled her to generalize her wit, while the Florines and the Schontzes exerted theirs over a

"There is in Dinah," said Etienne to Bixiou, "the stuff to make both a Ninon and a De Stael."

"A woman who combines an encyclopaedia and a seraglio is very dangerous," replied the mocking spirit.

When the expected infant became a visible fact, Madame de la Baudraye would be seen no more; but before

shutting herself up, never to go out unless into the country, she was bent on being present at the first

performance of a play by Nathan. This literary solemnity occupied the minds of the two thousand persons

who regard themselves as constituting "all Paris." Dinah, who had never been at a first night's performance,

was very full of natural curiosity. She had by this time arrived at such a pitch of affection for Lousteau that

she gloried in her misconduct; she exerted a sort of savage strength to defy the world; she was determined to

She dressed herself to perfection, in a style suited to her delicate looks and the sickly whiteness of her face.

Her pallid complexion gave her an expression of refinement, and her black hair in smooth bands enhanced

her pallor. Her brilliant gray eyes looked finer than ever, set in dark rings. But a terribly distressing incident

awaited her. By a very simple chance, the box given to the journalist, on the first tier, was next to that which

Anna Grossetete had taken. The two intimate friends did not even bow; neither chose to acknowledge the

other. At the end of the first act Lousteau left his seat, abandoning Dinah to the fire of eyes, the glare of

operaglasses; while the Baronne de Fontaine and the Comtesse Marie de Vandenesse, who accompanied

Dinah's solitude was all the more distressing because she had not the art of putting a good face to the matter

by examining the company through her operaglass. In vain did she try to assume a dignified and thoughtful

attitude, and fix her eyes on vacancy; she was overpoweringly conscious of being the object of general

attention; she could not disguise her discomfort, and lapsed a little into provincialism, displaying her

handkerchief and making involuntary movements of which she had almost cured herself. At last, between the

second and third acts, a man had himself admitted to Dinah's box! It was Monsieur de Clagny.

"I am happy to see you, to tell you how much I am pleased by your promotion," said she.

"Everything," said he. "Since you left Sancerre, it had become intolerable to me; I was dying"

"Your sincere friendship does me good," replied she, holding out her hand. "I am in a position to make much

of my true friends; I now know their value.I feared I must have lost your esteem, but the proof you have

"You are an object of curiosity to the whole house," said the lawyer. "Oh! my dear, is this a part for you to be

playing? Could you not be happy and yet remain honored?I have just heard that you are Monsieur Etienne

Lousteau's mistress, that you live together as man and wife! You have broken for ever with society; even if

you should some day marry your lover, the time will come when you will feel the want of the respectability

you now despise. Ought you not to be in a home of your own with your mother, who loves you well enough

"I am in the wrong to have come here," replied she, "that is all.I have bid farewell to all the advantages

which the world confers on women who know how to reconcile happiness and the proprieties. My abnegation

is so complete that I only wish I could clear a vast space about me to make a desert of my love, full of God,

of him, and of myself.We have made too many sacrifices on both sides not to be unitedunited by

disgrace if you will, but indissolubly one. I am happy; so happy that I can love freely, my friend, and confide

The lawyer was magnanimous, nay, truly great. To this declaration, in which Dinah's soul thrilled, he replied

"I wanted to go to see you, to be sure that you were loved: I shall now be easy and no longer alarmed as to

your future.But will your lover appreciate the magnitude of your sacrifice; is there any gratitude in his

"Yes, I will call," he replied. "I have already passed your door without daring to inquire for you.You do

not yet know the literary world. There are glorious exceptions, no doubt; but these men of letters drag terrible

evils in their train; among these I account publicity as one of the greatest, for it blights everything. A woman

"Well!and then after a rupture there is still something to fall back on; the world has known nothing. But

with a more or less famous man the public is thoroughly informed. Why look there! What an example you

have close at hand! You are sitting back to back with the Comtesse Marie Vandenesse, who was within an

ace of committing the utmost folly for a more celebrated man than Lousteaufor Nathanand now they do

not even recognize each other. After going to the very edge of the precipice, the Countess was saved, no one

knows how; she neither left her husband nor her house; but as a famous man was scorned, she was the talk of

the town for a whole winter. But her husband's great fortune, great name, and high position, but for the

admirable management of that true statesmanwhose conduct to his wife, they say, was perfectshe would

have been ruined; in her position no other woman would have remained respected as she is."

"And how was Sancerre when you came away?" asked Madame de la Baudraye, to change the subject.

"Monsieur de la Baudraye announced that your expected confinement after so many years made it necessary

that it should take place in Paris, and that he had insisted on your going to be attended by the first

physicians," replied Monsieur de Clagny, guessing what it was that Dinah most wanted to know. "And so, in

spite of the commotion to which your departure gave rise, you still have your legal status."

This brief triumph brought greater happiness to the poor woman than she had ever known in the whole of her

"There are two ways. One is by being Madame de Stael, the other is by having two hundred thousand francs a

"Society," said she, "asserts its hold on us by appealing to our vanity, our love of appearances.Pooh! We

That evening was the last gleam of the delusive wellbeing in which Madame de la Baudraye had lived since

coming to Paris. Three days later she observed a cloud on Lousteau's brow as he walked round the little

gardenplot smoking a cigar. This woman, who had acquired from her husband the habit and the pleasure of

never owing anybody a sou, was informed that the household was penniless, with two quarters' rent owing,

This reality of Paris life pierced Dinah's heart like a thorn; she repented of having tempted Etienne into the

extravagances of love. It is so difficult to pass from pleasure to work, that happiness has wrecked more

poems than sorrows ever helped to flow in sparkling jets. Dinah, happy in seeing Etienne taking his ease,

smoking a cigar after breakfast, his face beaming as he basked like a lizard in the sunshine, could not

It struck her that through the worthy Migeon, Pamela's father, she might pawn the few jewels she possessed,

on which her "uncle," for she was learning to talk the slang of the town, advanced her nine hundred francs.

She kept three hundred for her babyclothes and the expenses of her illness, and joyfully presented the sum

due to Lousteau, who was ploughing, furrow by furrow, or, if you will, line by line, through a novel for a

"Dearest heart," said she, "finish your novel without making any sacrifice to necessity; polish the style, work

up the subject.I have played the fine lady too long; I am going to be the housewife and attend to business."

For the last four months Etienne had been taking Dinah to the Cafe Riche to dine every day, a corner being

always kept for them. The countrywoman was in dismay at being told that five hundred francs were owing

"What! we have been drinking wine at six francs a bottle! A sole Normande costs five francs!and twenty

centimes for a roll?" she exclaimed, as she looked through the bill Lousteau showed her.

"Well, it makes very little difference to us whether we are robbed at a restaurant or by a cook," said Lousteau.

Having induced the landlord to let her have a kitchen and two servants' rooms, Madame de la Baudraye wrote

a few lines to her mother, begging her to send her some linen and a loan of a thousand francs. She received

two trunks full of linen, some plate, and two thousand francs, sent by the hand of an honest and pious cook

Ten days after the evening at the theatre when they had met, Monsieur de Clagny came to call at four o'clock,

after coming out of court, and found Madame de la Baudraye making a little cap. The sight of this proud and

ambitious woman, whose mind was so accomplished, and who had queened it so well at the Chateau d'Anzy,

now condescending to household cares and sewing for the coming infant, moved the poor lawyer, who had

just left the bench. And as he saw the pricks on one of the taper fingers he had so often kissed, he understood

In the course of this first interview the magistrate saw to the depths of Dinah's soul. This perspicacity in a

man so much in love was a superhuman effort. He saw that Didine meant to be the journalist's guardian spirit

and lead him into a nobler road; she had seen that the difficulties of his practical life were due to some moral

defects. Between two beings united by lovein one so genuine, and in the other so well feignedmore than

one confidence had been exchanged in the course of four months. Notwithstanding the care with which

Etienne wrapped up his true self, a word now and then had not failed to enlighten Dinah as to the previous

life of a man whose talents were so hampered by poverty, so perverted by bad examples, so thwarted by

obstacles beyond his courage to surmount. "He will be a greater man if life is easy to him," said she to

herself. And she strove to make him happy, to give him the sense of a sheltered home by dint of such

economy and method as are familiar to provincial folks. Thus Dinah became a housekeeper, as she had

These words, wrung from Madame de la Baudraye by her friend the lawyer, accounted for the existing state

of things. The publicity of his triumph, flaunted by Etienne on the evening of the first performance, had very

plainly shown the lawyer what Lousteau's purpose was. To Etienne, Madame de la Baudraye was, to use his

own phrase, "a fine feather in his cap." Far from preferring the joys of a shy and mysterious passion, of

hiding such exquisite happiness from the eyes of the world, he found a vulgar satisfaction in displaying the

The Judge, however, was for some time deceived by the attentions which any man would lavish on any

woman in Madame de la Baudraye's situation, and Lousteau made them doubly charming by the ingratiating

ways characteristic of men whose manners are naturally attractive. There are, in fact, men who have

something of the monkey in them by nature, and to whom the assumption of the most engaging forms of

sentiment is so easy that the actor is not detected; and Lousteau's natural gifts had been fully developed on

Between the months of April and July, when Dinah expected her confinement, she discovered why it was that

Lousteau had not triumphed over poverty; he was idle and had no power of will. The brain, to be sure, must

obey its own laws; it recognizes neither the exigencies of life nor the voice of honor; a man cannot write a

great book because a woman is dying, or to pay a discreditable debt, or to bring up a family; at the same time,

there is no great talent without a strong will. These twin forces are requisite for the erection of the vast edifice

of personal glory. A distinguished genius keeps his brain in a productive condition, just as the knights of old

kept their weapons always ready for battle. They conquer indolence, they deny themselves enervating

pleasures, or indulge only to a fixed limit proportioned to their powers. This explains the life of such men as

Walter Scott, Cuvier, Voltaire, Newton, Buffon, Bayle, Bossuet, Leibnitz, Lopez de Vega, Calderon,

Boccacio, Aretino, Aristotlein short, every man who delighted, governed, or led his contemporaries.

A man may and ought to pride himself more on his will than on his talent. Though Talent has its germ in a

cultivated gift, Will means the incessant conquest of his instincts, of proclivities subdued and mortified, and

difficulties of every kind heroically defeated. The abuse of smoking encouraged Lousteau's indolence.

Then, while the cigar deteriorated him physically, criticism as a profession morally stultified a man so easily

tempted by pleasure. Criticism is as fatal to the critic as seeing two sides to a question is to a pleader. In these

professions the judgment is undermined, the mind loses its lucid rectitude. The writer lives by taking sides.

Thus, we may distinguish two kinds of criticism, as in painting we may distinguish art from practical

dexterity. Criticism, after the pattern of most contemporary leaderwriters, is the expression of judgments

formed at random in a more or less witty way, just as an advocate pleads in court on the most contradictory

briefs. The newspaper critic always finds a subject to work up in the book he is discussing. Done after this

fashion, the business is well adapted to indolent brains, to men devoid of the sublime faculty of imagination,

or, possessed of it indeed, but lacking courage to cultivate it. Every play, every book comes to their pen as a

subject, making no demand on their imagination, and of which they simply write a report, seriously or in

irony, according to the mood of the moment. As to an opinion, whatever it may be, French wit can always

justify it, being admirably ready to defend either side of any case. And conscience counts for so little, these

bravi have so little value for their own words, that they will loudly praise in the greenroom the work they tear

Nay, men have been known to transfer their services from one paper to another without being at the pains to

consider that the opinions of the new sheet must be diametrically antagonistic to those of the old. Madame de

la Baudraye could smile to see Lousteau with one article on the Legitimist side and one on the side of the new

The other kind of criticism is a science. It necessitates a thorough comprehension of each work, a lucid

insight into the tendencies of the age, the adoption of a system, and faith in fixed principlesthat is to say, a

scheme of jurisprudence, a summingup, and a verdict. The critic is then a magistrate of ideas, the censor of

his time; he fulfils a sacred function; while in the former case he is but an acrobat who turns somersaults for a

living so long as he had a leg to stand on. Between Claude Vignon and Lousteau lay the gulf that divides

Dinah, whose mind was soon freed from rust, and whose intellect was by no means narrow, had ere long

taken literary measure of her idol. She saw Lousteau working up to the last minute under the most

discreditable compulsion, and scamping his work, as painters say of a picture from which sound technique is

absent; but she would excuse him by saying, "He is a poet!" so anxious was she to justify him in her own

eyes. When she thus guessed the secret of many a writer's existence, she also guessed that Lousteau's pen

Then her love for him led her to take a step she would never had thought of for her own sake. Through her

mother she tried to negotiate with her husband for an allowance, but without Etienne's knowledge; for, as she

thought, it would be an offence to his delicate feelings, which must be considered. A few days before the end

of July, Dinah crumbled up in her wrath the letter from her mother containing Monsieur de la Baudraye's

"Madame de la Baudraye cannot need an allowance in Paris when she can live in perfect luxury at her

"I will avenge you!" said he to Dinah in the ominous tone that delights a woman when her antipathies are

Five days after this Bianchon and Duriau, the famous ladies' doctor, were engaged at Lousteau's; for he, ever

since little La Baudraye's reply, had been making a great display of his joy and importance over the advent of

the infant. Monsieur de Clagny and Madame Piedefersent for in all haste were to be the godparents, for the

cautious magistrate feared lest Lousteau should commit some compromising blunder. Madame de la

Baudraye gave birth to a boy that might have filled a queen with envy who hoped for an heirpresumptive.

Bianchon and Monsieur de Clagny went off to register the child at the Mayor's office as the son of Monsieur

and Madame de la Baudraye, unknown to Etienne, who, on his part, rushed off to a printer's to have this

Lousteau had already sent out sixty of these announcements when Monsieur de Clagny, on coming to make

inquiries, happened to see the list of persons at Sancerre to whom Lousteau proposed to send this amazing

notice, written below the names of the persons in Paris to whom it was already gone. The lawyer confiscated

the list and the remainder of the circulars, showed them to Madame Piedefer, begging her on no account to

allow Lousteau to carry on this atrocious jest, and jumped into a cab. The devoted friend then ordered from

After seeing the proofs destroyed, the form of type, everything that could bear witness to the existence of the

former document, Monsieur de Clagny set to work to intercept those that had been sent; in many cases he

changed them at the porter's lodge, he got back thirty into his own hands, and at last, after three days of hard

Five times had the lawyer called on the great man without finding him. By the time Monsieur de Clagny was

admitted, after requesting an interview, the story of the announcement was known to all Paris. Some persons

regarded it as one of those waggish calumnies, a sort of stab to which every reputation, even the most

ephemeral, is exposed; others said they had read the paper and returned it to some friend of the La Baudraye

family; a great many declaimed against the immorality of journalists; in short, this last remaining specimen

was regarded as a curiosity. Florine, with whom Nathan was living, had shown it about, stamped in the post

as paid, and addressed in Etienne's hand. So, as soon as the judge spoke of the announcement, Nathan began

"Give up that monument of recklessness and folly?" cried he. "That autograph is one of those weapons which

an athlete in the circus cannot afford to lay down. That note proves that Lousteau has no heart, no taste, no

dignity; that he knows nothing of the world nor of public morality; that he insults himself when he can find

no one else to insult.None but the son of a provincial citizen imported from Sancerre to become a poet, but

who is only the bravo of some contemptible magazine, could ever have sent out such a circular letter, as you

must allow, monsieur. This is a document indispensable to the archives of the age.Today Lousteau

flatters me, tomorrow he may ask for my head.Excuse me, I forgot you were a judge.

"I have gone through a passion for a lady, a great lady, as far superior to Madame de la Baudraye as your fine

feeling, monsieur, is superior to Lousteau's vulgar retaliation; but I would have died rather than utter her

name. A few months of her airs and graces cost me a hundred thousand francs and my prospects for life; but I

do not think the price too high!And I have never murmured!If a woman betrays the secret of her

passion, it is the supreme offering of her love, but a man!He must be a Lousteau!

"Monsieur," said the lawyer at last, after an eloquent battle lasting half an hour, "I have called on fifteen or

sixteen men of letters about this affair, and can it be that you are the only one immovable by an appeal of

honor? It is not for Etienne Lousteau that I plead, but for a woman and child, both equally ignorant of the

damage done to their fortune, their prospects, and their honor.Who knows, monsieur, whether you might

not some day be compelled to plead for some favor of justice for a friend, for some person whose honor was

dearer to you than your own.It might be remembered against you that you had been ruthless.Can such a

"I only wished you to understand the extent of the sacrifice," replied Nathan, giving up the letter, as he

When the journalist's stupid jest had been counteracted, Monsieur de Clagny went to give him a rating in the

"What I did monsieur, I did with a purpose!" replied Etienne. "Monsieur de la Baudraye has sixty thousand

francs a year and refuses to make his wife an allowance; I wished to make him feel that the child is in my

"Yes, monsieur, I quite suspected it," replied the lawyer. "For that reason I readily agreed to be little

Polydore's godfather, and he is registered as the son of the Baron and Baronne de la Baudraye; if you have

the feelings of a father, you ought to rejoice in knowing that the child is heir to one of the finest entailed

"Be quite easy," said the lawyer bitterly, having dragged from Lousteau the expression of feeling he had so

long been expecting. "I will undertake to transact the matter with Monsieur de la Baudraye."

Dinah, his idol, was loved for her money. Would she not, when too late, have her eyes opened?

"Poor woman!" said the lawyer, as he walked away. And this justice we will do himfor to whom should

justice be done unless to a Judge?he loved Dinah too sincerely to regard her degradation as a means of

The care and nursing of the infant, its cries, the quiet needed for the mother during the first few days, and the

ubiquity of Madame Piedefer, were so entirely adverse to literary labors, that Lousteau moved up to the three

rooms taken on the first floor for the old bigot. The journalist, obliged to go to the first performances without

Dinah, and living apart from her, found an indescribable charm in the use of his liberty. More than once he

submitted to be taken by the arm and dragged off to some jollification; more than once he found himself at

the house of a friend's mistress in the heart of bohemia. He again saw women brilliantly young and splendidly

dressed, in whom economy seemed treason to their youth and power. Dinah, in spite of her striking beauty,

after nursing her baby for three months, could not stand comparison with these perishable blossoms, so soon

Home life had, nevertheless, a strong attraction for Etienne. In three months the mother and daughter, with

the help of the cook from Sancerre and of little Pamela, had given the apartment a quite changed appearance.

The journalist found his breakfast and his dinner served with a sort of luxury. Dinah, handsome and nicely

dressed, was careful to anticipate her dear Etienne's wishes, and he felt himself the king of his home, where

everything, even the baby, was subject to his selfishness. Dinah's affection was to be seen in every trifle,

Lousteau could not possibly cease the entrancing deceptions of his unreal passion.

Dinah, meanwhile, was aware of a source of ruin, both to her love and to the household, in the kind of life

into which Lousteau had allowed himself to drift. At the end of ten months she weaned her baby, installed her

mother in the upstairs rooms, and restored the family intimacy which indissolubly links a man and woman

when the woman is loving and clever. One of the most striking circumstances in Benjamin Constant's novel,

one of the explanations of Ellenore's desertion, is the want of dailyor, if you will, of nightlyintercourse

between her and Adolphe. Each of the lovers has a separate home; they have both submitted to the world and

saved appearances. Ellenore, repeatedly left to herself, is compelled to vast labors of affection to expel the

thoughts of release which captivate Adolphe when absent. The constant exchange of glances and thoughts in

domestic life gives a woman such power that a man needs stronger reasons for desertion than she will ever

This was an entirely new phase both to Etienne and to Dinah. Dinah intended to be indispensable; she wanted

to infuse fresh energy into this man, whose weakness smiled upon her, for she thought it a security. She

found him subjects, sketched the treatment, and at a pinch, would write whole chapters. She revived the

vitality of this dying talent by transfusing fresh blood into his veins; she supplied him with ideas and

opinions. In short, she produced two books which were a success. More than once she saved Lousteau's

selfesteem by dictating, correcting, or finishing his articles when he was in despair at his own lack of ideas.

The secret of this collaboration was strictly preserved; Madame Piedefer knew nothing of it.

This mental galvanism was rewarded by improved pay, enabling them to live comfortably till the end of

1838. Lousteau became used to seeing Dinah do his work, and he paid heras the French people say in their

vigorous lingoin "monkey money," nothing for her pains. This expenditure in selfsacrifice becomes a

treasure which generous souls prize, and the more she gave the more she loved Lousteau; the time soon came

But then another child was coming, and this year was a terrible trial. In spite of the precautions of the two

women, Etienne contracted debts; he worked himself to death to pay them off while Dinah was laid up; and,

knowing him as she did, she thought him heroic. But after this effort, appalled at having two women, two

children, and two maids on his hands, he was incapable of the struggle to maintain a family by his pen when

he had failed to maintain even himself. So he let things take their chance. Then the ruthless speculator

Dinah proudly endured the burden of life without support. The one idea, "He loves me!" gave her

superhuman strength. She worked as hard as the most energetic spirits of our time. At the risk of her beauty

and health, Didine was to Lousteau what Mademoiselle Delachaux was to Gardane in Diderot's noble and

true tale. But while sacrificing herself, she committed the magnanimous blunder of sacrificing dress. She had

her gowns dyed, and wore nothing but black. She stank of black, as Malaga said, making fun mercilessly of

By the end of 1839, Etienne, following the example of Louis XV., had, by dint of gradual capitulations of

conscience, come to the point of establishing a distinction between his own money and the housekeeping

money, just as Louis XV. drew the line between his privy purse and the public moneys. He deceived Dinah as

to his earnings. On discovering this baseness, Madame de la Baudraye went through fearful tortures of

jealousy. She wanted to live two livesthe life of the world and the life of a literary woman; she

accompanied Lousteau to every first night performance, and could detect in him many impulses of wounded

vanity, for her black attire rubbed off, as it were, on him, clouding his brow, and sometimes leading him to be

quite brutal. He was really the woman of the two; and he had all a woman's exacting perversity; he would

reproach Dinah for the dowdiness of her appearance, even while benefiting by the sacrifice, which to a

mistress is so cruelexactly like a woman who, after sending a man through a gutter to save her honor, tells

Dinah then found herself obliged to gather up the rather loose reins of power by which a clever woman drives

a man devoid of will. But in so doing she could not fail to lose much of her moral lustre. Such suspicions as

she betrayed drag a woman into quarrels which lead to disrespect, because she herself comes down from the

high level on which she had at first placed herself. Next she made some concession; Lousteau was allowed to

entertain several of his friendsNathan, Bixiou, Blondet, Finot, whose manners, language, and intercourse

were depraving. They tried to convince Madame de la Baudraye that her principles and aversions were a

survival of provincial prudishness; and they preached the creed of woman's superiority.

Before long, her jealousy put weapons into Lousteau's hands. During the carnival of 1840, she disguised

herself to go to the balls at the Operahouse, and to suppers where she met courtesans, in order to keep an

On the day of MidLentor rather, at eight on the morning after Dinah came home from the ball in her

fancy dress to go to bed. She had gone to spy on Lousteau, who, believing her to be ill, had engaged himself

for that evening to Fanny Beaupre. The journalist, warned by a friend, had behaved so as to deceive the poor

As she stepped out of the hired cab, Dinah met Monsieur de la Baudraye, to whom the porter pointed her out.

This sudden advent of conjugal authority, before which she felt herself so small, and, above all, these words,

almost froze the heart of the unhappy woman caught in the costume of a debardeur. To escape Etienne's eye

the more effectually, she had chosen a dress he was not likely to detect her in. She took advantage of the

mask she still had on to escape without replying, changed her dress, and went up to her mother's rooms,

where she found her husband waiting for her. In spite of her assumed dignity, she blushed in the old man's

Madame Piedefer was telegraphing signals to her daughter, which Dinah presently observed and understood.

"Nothing could have brought you here but your own interests," she said, in a bitter tone.

"Our interests," said the little man coldly, "for we have two children.Your Uncle Silas Piedefer is dead, at

New York, where, after having made and lost several fortunes in various parts of the world, he has finally left

some seven or eight hundred thousand francs they say twelvebut there is stockintrade to be sold. I am

"Oh!" cried Dinah, "in everything that relates to business, I trust no one but Monsieur de Clagny. He knows

"I have no occasion for Monsieur de Clagny," answered Monsieur de la Baudraye, "to take my children from

"Your children!" exclaimed Dinah. "Your children, to whom you have not sent a sou! Your children!" She

burst into a loud shout of laughter; but Monsieur de la Baudraye's unmoved coolness threw ice on the

"Your mother has just brought them to show me," he went on. "They are charming boys. I do not intend to

part from them. I shall take them to our house at Anzy, if it were only to save them from seeing their mother

"Silence!" said Madame de la Baudraye imperatively. "What do you want of me that brought you here?"

Dinah took a pen, wrote two lines to Monsieur de Clagny, and desired her husband to call again in the

AttorneyGeneralenlightened Madame de la Baudraye as to her position; still, he undertook to arrange

everything by a bargain with the old fellow, whose visit had been prompted by avarice alone. Monsieur de la

Baudraye, to whom his wife's power of attorney was indispensable to enable him to deal with the business as

he wished, purchased it by certain concessions. In the first place, he undertook to allow her ten thousand

francs a year so long as she found it convenientso the document was wordedto reside in Paris; the

children, each on attaining the age of six, were to be placed in Monsieur de la Baudraye's keeping. Finally,

Little La Baudraye, who came jauntily enough to say goodbye to his wife and his children, appeared in a

white indiarubber overcoat. He was so firm on his feet, and so exactly like the La Baudraye of 1836, that

Dinah despaired of ever burying the dreadful little dwarf. From the garden, where he was smoking a cigar,

the journalist could watch Monsieur de la Baudraye for so long as it took the little reptile to cross the

forecourt, but that was enough for Lousteau; it was plain to him that the little man had intended to wreck

This short scene made a considerable change in the writer's secret scheming. As he smoked a second cigar, he

His life with Madame de la Baudraye had hitherto cost him quite as much as it had cost her. To use the

language of business, the two sides of the account balanced, and they could, if necessary, cry quits.

Considering how small his income was, and how hardly he earned it, Lousteau regarded himself, morally

speaking, as the creditor. It was, no doubt, a favorable moment for throwing the woman over. Tired at the end

of three years of playing a comedy which never can become a habit, he was perpetually concealing his

weariness; and this fellow, who was accustomed to disguise none of his feelings, compelled himself to wear a

smile at home like that of a debtor in the presence of his creditor. This compulsion was every day more

Hitherto the immense advantages he foresaw in the future had given him strength; but when he saw Monsieur

de la Baudraye embark for the United States, as briskly as if it were to go down to Rouen in a steamboat, he

He went in from the garden to the pretty drawingroom, where Dinah had just taken leave of her husband.

"Etienne," said Madame de la Baudraye, "do you know what my lord and master has proposed to me? In the

event of my wishing to return to live at Anzy during his absence, he has left his orders, and he hopes that my

mother's good advice will weigh with me, and that I shall go back there with my children."

"It is very good advice," replied Lousteau drily, knowing the passionate disclaimer that Dinah expected, and

The tone, the words, the cold look, all hit the hapless woman so hard, who lived only in her love, that two

large tears trickled slowly down her cheeks, while she did not speak a word, and Lousteau only saw them

"What is it, Didine?" he asked, touched to the heart by this excessive sensibility.

"Just as I was priding myself on having won our freedom," said she "at the cost of my fortuneby

sellingwhat is most precious to a mother's heartselling my children!for he is to have them from the

age of sixand I cannot see them without going to Sancerre!and that is torture!Ah, dear God! What

Lousteau knelt down by her and kissed her hands with a lavish display of coaxing and petting.

"You do not understand me," said he. "I blame myself, for I am not worth such sacrifices, dear angel. I am, in

a literary sense, a quite secondrate man. If the day comes when I can no longer cut a figure at the bottom of

the newspaper, the editors will let me lie, like an old shoe flung into the rubbish heap. Remember, we

tightrope dancers have no retiring pension! The State would have too many clever men on its hands if it

started on such a career of beneficence. I am fortytwo, and I am as idle as a marmot. I feel itI know

"As you know, at twoandtwenty I lived on Florine; but what is excusable in a youth, what then seems

smart and charming, is a disgrace to a man of forty. Hitherto we have shared the burden of existence, and it

has not been lovely for this year and half. Out of devotion to me you wear nothing but black, and that does

me no credit."Dinah gave one of those magnanimous shrugs which are worth all the words ever

spoken."Yes," Etienne went on, "I know you sacrifice everything to my whims, even your beauty. And I,

with a heart worn out in past struggles, a soul full of dark presentiments as to the future, I cannot repay your

exquisite love with an equal affection. We were very happywithout a cloudfor a long time. Well,

Madame de la Baudraye loved Etienne so truly, that this prudence, worthy of de Clagny, gratified her and

After four years of intimacy, this woman's love now combined every shade of affection which our powers of

analysis can discern, and which modern society has created; one of the most remarkable men of our age,

whose death is a recent loss to the world of letters, Beyle (Stendhal), was the first to delineate them to

Lousteau could produce in Dinah the acute agitation which may be compared to magnetism, that upsets every

power of the mind and body, and overcomes every instinct of resistance in a woman. A look from him, or his

hand laid on hers, reduced her to implicit obedience. A kind word or a smile wreathed the poor woman's soul

with flowers; a fond look elated, a cold look depressed her. When she walked, taking his arm and keeping

step with him in the street or on the boulevard, she was so entirely absorbed in him that she lost all sense of

herself. Fascinated by this fellow's wit, magnetized by his airs, his vices were but trivial defects in her eyes.

She loved the puffs of cigar smoke that the wind brought into her room from the garden; she went to inhale

them, and made no wry faces, hiding herself to enjoy them. She hated the publisher or the newspaper editor

who refused Lousteau money on the ground of the enormous advances he had had already. She deluded

herself so far as to believe that her bohemian was writing a novel, for which the payment was to come,

This, no doubt, is true love, and includes every mode of loving; the love of the heart and of the

headpassion, caprice, and tasteto accept Beyle's definitions. Didine loved him so wholly, that in certain

moments when her critical judgment, just by nature, and constantly exercised since she had lived in Paris,

compelled her to read to the bottom of Lousteau's soul, sense was still too much for reason, and suggested

"And what am I?" she replied. "A woman who has put herself outside the pale. Since I have sacrificed all a

woman's honor, why should you not sacrifice to me some of a man's honor? Do we not live outside the limits

of social conventionality? Why not accept from me what Nathan can accept from Florine? We will square

accounts when we part, and only death can part usyou know. My happiness is your honor, Etienne, as my

constancy and your happiness are mine. If I fail to make you happy, all is at an end. If I cause you a pang,

"Our debts are paid; we have ten thousand francs a year, and between us we can certainly make eight

thousand francs a yearI will write theatrical articles.With fifteen hundred francs a month we shall be as

rich as Rothschild.Be quite easy. I will have some lovely dresses, and give you every day some gratified

"And what about your mother, who goes to Mass every day, and wants to bring a priest to the house and

"Every one has a pet vice. You smoke, she preaches at me, poor woman! But she takes great care of the

children, she takes them out, she is absolutely devoted, and idolizes me. Would you hinder her from crying?"

"But we do not live for the world!" cried she, raising Etienne and making him sit by her. "Besides, we shall

"I never thought of that," said Lousteau simply; and he added to himself, "Time enough to part when little La

From that day forth Etienne lived in luxury; and Dinah, on first nights, could hold her own with the best

dressed women in Paris. Lousteau was so fatuous as to affect, among his friends, the attitude of a man

"Oh, what would I not give to the friend who would deliver me from Dinah! But no one ever can!" said he.

The journalist was duly pitied; he would take precautions against Dinah's jealousy when he accepted an

invitation. And then he was shamelessly unfaithful. Monsieur de Clagny, really in despair at seeing Dinah in

such disgraceful circumstances when she might have been so rich, and in so wretched a position at the time

when her original ambitions would have been fulfilled, came to warn her, to tell her"You are betrayed,"

The hapless man's eyes flashed like torches, he trembled like a leaf, his throat was rigid, his hair thrilled to

the roots; he believed he was so blessed as to be accepted as his idol's avenger, and this poor joy filled him

"Why are you so startled?" said she, making him sit down again. "That is how I love him."

The lawyer understood this argument ad hominem. And there were tears in the eyes of the Judge, who had

Lousteau's satiety, that odious conclusion of such illicit relations, had betrayed itself in a thousand little

things, which are like grains of sand thrown against the panes of the little magical hut where those who love

dwell and dream. These grains of sand, which grow to be pebbles, had never been discerned by Dinah till

they were as big as rocks. Madame de la Baudraye had at last thoroughly understood Lousteau's character.

"He is," she said to her mother, "a poet, defenceless against disaster, mean out of laziness, not for want of

heart, and rather too prone to pleasure; in short, a great cat, whom it is impossible to hate. What would

become of him without me? I hindered his marriage; he has no prospects. His talent would perish in

"Oh, my Dinah!" Madame Piedefer had exclaimed, "what a hell you live in! What is the feeling that gives

There are certain horrible situations in which we come to no decision till the moment when our friends

discern our dishonor. We accept compromises with ourself so long as we escape a censor who comes to play

prosecutor. Monsieur de Clagny, as clumsy as a tortured man, had been torturing Dinah.

"To preserve my love I will be all that Madame de Pompadour was to preserve her power," said she to herself

when Monsieur de Clagny had left her. And this phrase sufficiently proves that her love was becoming a

The part now assumed by Dinah was horribly painful, and Lousteau made it no easier to play. When he

wanted to go out after dinner he would perform the tenderest little farces of affection, and address Dinah in

words full of devotion; he would take her by the chain, and when he had bruised her with it, even while he

These false caresses and deceptions had degrading consequences for Dinah, who believed in a revival of his

love. The mother, alas, gave way to the mistress with shameful readiness. She felt herself a mere plaything in

"Well, then, I will be his plaything!" finding joy in itthe rapture of damnation.

When this woman, of a really manly spirit, pictured herself as living in solitude, she felt her courage fail. She

preferred the anticipated and inevitable miseries of this fierce intimacy to the absence of the joys, which were

all the more exquisite because they arose from the midst of remorse, of terrible struggles with herself, of a

No persuaded to be Yes. At every moment she seemed to come across the pool of bitter water found in a

desert, and drunk with greater relish than the traveler would find in sipping the finest wines at a prince's table.

"Will he come home, or will he not?" she was not alive again till she heard the familiar sound of Lousteau's

She would often try to restrain him by giving him pleasure; she would hope to be a match for her rivals, and

leave them no hold on that agitated heart. How many times a day would she rehearse the tragedy of Le

Dernier Jour d'un condamne, saying to herself, "Tomorrow we part." And how often would a word, a look,

a kiss full of apparently artless feeling, bring her back to the depths of her love!

It was terrible. More than once had she meditated suicide as she paced the little town garden where a few pale

flowers bloomed. In fact, she had not yet exhausted the vast treasure of devotion and love which a loving

The romance of Adolphe was her Bible, her study, for above all else she would not be an Ellenore. She

allowed herself no tears, she avoided all the bitterness so cleverly described by the critic to whom we owe an

analysis of this striking work; whose comments indeed seemed to Dinah almost superior to the book. And she

read again and again this fine essay by the only real critic who has written in the Revue des Deux Mondes, an

"No," she would say to herself, as she repeated the author's fateful words, "no, I will not 'give my requests the

form of an order,' I will not 'fly to tears as a means of revenge,' I will not 'condemn the things I once approved

without reservation,' I will not 'dog his footsteps with a prying eye'; if he plays truant, he shall not on his

return 'see a scornful lip, whose kiss is an unanswerable command.' No, 'my silence shall not be a reproach

nor my first word a quarrel.' I will not be like every other woman!" she went on, laying on her table the

little yellow paper volume which had already attracted Lousteau's remark, "What! are you studying

Adolphe?""If for one day only he should recognize my merits and say, 'That victim never uttered a

cry!'it will be all I ask. And besides, the others only have him for an hour; I have him for life!"

Thinking himself justified by his private tribunal in punishing his wife, Monsieur de la Baudraye robbed her

to achieve his cherished enterprise of reclaiming three thousand acres of moorland, to which he had devoted

himself ever since 1836, living like a mouse. He manipulated the property left by Monsieur Silas Piedefer so

ingeniously, that he contrived to reduce the proved value to eight hundred thousand francs, while pocketing

twelve hundred thousand. He did not announce his return; but while his wife was enduring unspeakable woes,

he was building farms, digging trenches, and ploughing rough ground with a courage that ranked him among

The four hundred thousand francs he had filched from his wife were spent in three years on this undertaking,

and the estate of Anzy was expected to return seventytwo thousand francs a year of net profits after the

taxes were paid. The eight hundred thousand he invested at four and a half per cent in the funds, buying at

eighty francs, at the time of the financial crisis brought about by the Ministry of the First of March, as it was

called. By thus securing to his wife an income of fortyeight thousand francs he considered himself no longer

in her debt. Could he not restore the odd twelve hundred thousand as soon as the four and a half per cents had

risen above a hundred? He was now the greatest man in Sancerre, with the exception of onethe richest

proprietor in Francewhose rival he considered himself. He saw himself with an income of a hundred and

forty thousand francs, of which ninety thousand formed the revenue from the lands he had entailed. Having

calculated that besides this net income he paid ten thousand francs in taxes, three thousand in working

expenses, ten thousand to his wife, and twelve hundred to his motherinlaw, he would say in the literary

"I am reputed miserly, and said to spend nothing; but my outlay amounts to twentysix thousand five

hundred francs a year. And I have still to pay for the education of my two children! I daresay it is not a

pleasing fact to the Milauds of Nevers, but the second house of La Baudraye may yet have as noble a center

as the first.I shall most likely go to Paris and petition the King of the French to grant me the title of

CountMonsieur Roy is a Countand my wife would be pleased to be Madame la Comtesse."

And this was said with such splendid coolness that no one would have dared to laugh at the little man. Only

In the early part of 1842 Madame de la Baudraye, feeling that she was to Lousteau no more than a reserve in

the background, had again sacrificed herself absolutely to secure his comfort; she had resumed her black

raiment, but now it was in sign of mourning, for her pleasure was turning to remorse. She was too often put to

shame not to feel the weight of the chain, and her mother found her sunk in those moods of meditation into

Madame Piedefer, by the advice of her spiritual director, was on the watch for the moment of exhaustion,

which the priest told her would inevitably supervene, and then she pleaded in behalf of the children. She

restricted herself to urging that Dinah and Lousteau should live apart, not asking her to give him up. In real

life these violent situations are not closed as they are in books, by death or cleverly contrived catastrophes;

they end far less poeticallyin disgust, in the blighting of every flower of the soul, in the commonplace of

habit, and very often too in another passion, which robs a wife of the interest which is traditionally ascribed

to women. So, when common sense, the law of social proprieties, family interestall the mixed elements

which, since the Restoration, have been dignified by the mane of Public Morals, out of sheer aversion to the

name of the Catholic religionwhere this is seconded by a sense of insults a little too offensive; when the

fatigue of constant selfsacrifice has almost reached the point of exhaustion; and when, under these

circumstances, a too cruel blowone of those mean acts which a man never lets a woman know of unless he

believes himself to be her assured master puts the crowning touch to her revulsion and disenchantment, the

moment has come for the intervention of the friend who undertakes the cure. Madame Piedefer had no great

She sent for Monsieur de Clagny, who completed the work by assuring Madame de la Baudraye that if she

would give up Etienne, her husband would allow her to keep the children and to live in Paris, and would

"And what a life you are leading!" said he. "With care and judgment, and the support of some pious and

charitable persons, you may have a salon and conquer a position. Paris is not Sancerre."

Dinah left it to Monsieur de Clagny to negotiate a reconciliation with the old man.

Monsieur de la Baudraye had sold his wine well, he had sold his wool, he had felled his timber, and, without

telling his wife, he had come to Paris to invest two hundred thousand francs in the purchase of a delightful

residence in the Rue de l'Arcade, that was being sold in liquidation of an aristocratic House that was in

difficulties. He had been a member of the Council for the Department since 1826, and now, paying ten

thousand francs in taxes, he was doubly qualified for a peerage under the conditions of the new legislation.

Some time before the elections of 1842 he had put himself forward as candidate unless he were meanwhile

called to the Upper House as Peer of France. At the same time, he asked for the title of Count, and for

promotion to the higher grade of the Legion of Honor. In the matter of the elections, the dynastic

nominations; now, in the event of Monsieur de la Baudraye being won over to the Government, Sancerre

would be more than ever a rotten borough of royalism. Monsieur de Clagny, whose talents and modesty were

more and more highly appreciated by the authorities, gave Monsieur de la Baudraye his support; he pointed

out that by raising this enterprising agriculturist to the peerage, a guarantee would be offered to such

Monsieur de la Baudraye, then, a Count, a Peer of France, and Commander of the Legion of Honor, was vain

enough to wish to cut a figure with a wife and handsomely appointed house."He wanted to enjoy life," he

He therefore addressed a letter to his wife, dictated by Monsieur de Clagny, begging her to live under his roof

and to furnish the house, giving play to the taste of which the evidences, he said, had charmed him at the

Chateau d'Anzy. The newly made Count pointed out to his wife that while the interests of their property

forbade his leaving Sancerre, the education of their boys required her presence in Paris. The accommodating

husband desired Monsieur de Clagny to place sixty thousand francs at the disposal of Madame la Comtesse

for the interior decoration of their mansion, requesting that she would have a marble tablet inserted over the

He then accounted to his wife for the money derived from the estate of Silas Piedefer, told her of the

investment at four and a half per cent of the eight hundred thousand francs he had brought from New York,

and allowed her that income for her expenses, including the education of the children. As he would be

compelled to stay in Paris during some part of the session of the House of Peers, he requested his wife to

"Bless me! why, he is growing young againa gentleman!a magnifico! What will he become next? It

The comparison of her future prospects with her present position was unendurable to Dinah. Only the day

before, Anna de Fontaine had turned her head away in order to avoid seeing her bosom friend at the

"I am a countess," said Dinah to herself. "I shall have the peer's blue hammercloth on my carriage, and the

leaders of the literary world in my drawingroomand I will look at her!"And it was this little triumph

that told with all its weight at the moment of her rehabilitation, as the world's contempt had of old weighed

One fine day, in May 1842, Madame de la Baudraye paid all her little household debts and left a thousand

crowns on top of the packet of receipted bills. After sending her mother and the children away to the Hotel de

la Baudraye, she awaited Lousteau, dressed ready to leave the house. When the deposed king of her heart

"I have upset the pot, my dear. Madame de la Baudraye requests the pleasure of your company at the Rocher

She carried off Lousteau, quite bewildered by the light and easy manners assumed by the woman who till that

morning has been the slave of his least whim, for she too had been acting a farce for two months past.

"Madame de la Baudraye is figged out as if for a first night," said he une premiere, the slang abbreviation

"Do not forget the respect you owe to Madame de la Baudraye," said Dinah gravely. "I do not mean to

"There is no such person as Didine; you have killed her, my dear," she replied, releasing herself. "I am taking

"The nomination is to be gazetted in this evening's Moniteur, as I am told by Monsieur de Clagny, who is

"Well, it is quite right," said the journalist. "The entomology of society ought to be represented in the Upper

"My friend, we are parting for ever," said Madame de la Baudraye, trying to control the trembling of her

voice. "I have dismissed the two servants. When you go in, you will find the house in order, and no debts. I

shall always feel a mother's affection for you, but in secret. Let us part calmly, without a fuss, like decent

"None, but that you have spoiled my life, and wrecked my prospects," said he in a hard tone. "You have read

Benjamin Constant's book very diligently; you have even studied the last critique on it; but you have read

with a woman's eyes. Though you have one of those superior intellects which would make a fortune of a poet,

"That book, my dear, is of both sexes.We agreed that books were male or female, dark or fair. In

Adolphe women see nothing but Ellenore; young men see only Adolphe; men of experience see Ellenore and

Adolphe; political men see the whole of social existence. You did not think it necessary to read the soul of

Adolpheany more than your critic indeed, who saw only Ellenore. What kills that poor fellow, my dear, is

that he has sacrificed his future for a woman; that he never can be what he might have beenan ambassador,

a minister, a chamberlain, a poetand rich. He gives up six years of his energy at that stage of his life when

a man is ready to submit to the hardships of any apprenticeshipto a petticoat, which he outstrips in the

career of ingratitude, for the woman who has thrown over her first lover is certain sooner or later to desert the

second. Adolphe is, in fact, a towhaired German, who has not spirit enough to be false to Ellenore. There

are Adolphes who spare their Ellenores all ignominious quarreling and reproaches, who say to themselves, 'I

will not talk of what I have sacrificed; I will not for ever be showing the stump of my wrist to let that

incarnate selfishness I have made my queen,' as Ramorny does in The Fair Maid of Perth. But men like that,

"Adolphe is a man of birth, an aristocratic nature, who wants to get back into the highroad to honors and

recover his social birthright, his blighted position.You, at this moment, are playing both parts. You are

suffering from the pangs of having lost your position, and think yourself justified in throwing over a hapless

lover whose misfortune it has been that he fancied you so far superior as to understand that, though a man's

"And do you suppose that I shall not make it my business to restore to you all you have lost by me? Be quite

easy," said Madame de la Baudraye, astounded by this attack. "Your Ellenore is not dying; and if God gives

her life, if you amend your ways, if you give up courtesans and actresses, we will find you a better match

The two lovers were sullen. Lousteau affected dejection, he aimed at appearing hard and cold; while Dinah,

"Why," said Lousteau presently, "why not end as we ought to have begun hide our love from all eyes, and

"Never!" cried the newmade Countess, with an icy look. "Do you not comprehend that we are, after all, but

finite creatures? Our feelings seem infinite by reason of our anticipation of heaven, but here on earth they are

limited by the strength of our physical being. There are some feeble, mean natures which may receive an

endless number of wounds and live on; but there are some more highlytempered souls which snap at last

"Oh! enough!" cried he. "No more copy! Your dissertation is unnecessary, since you can justify yourself by

"Certainly. You have calculated that I gave you more trouble, more vexation than pleasure, and you desert

This final Never, spoken in the fear of falling once more under Lousteau's influence, was interpreted by him

as the deathwarrant of his power, since Dinah remained insensible to his sarcastic scorn.

The journalist could not suppress a tear. He was losing a sincere and unbounded affection. He had found in

Dinah the gentlest La Valliere, the most delightful Pompadour that any egoist short of a king could hope for;

and, like a boy who has discovered that by dint of tormenting a cockchafer he has killed it, Lousteau shed a

Madame de la Baudraye rushed out of the private room where they had been dining, paid the bill, and fled

Dinah, who had made her house a model of comfort, now metamorphosed herself. This double

metamorphosis cost thirty thousand francs more than her husband had anticipated.

The fatal accident which in 1842 deprived the House of Orleans of the heirpresumptive having necessitated

a meeting of the Chambers in August of that year, little La Baudraye came to present his titles to the Upper

House sooner than he had expected, and then saw what his wife had done. He was so much delighted, that he

paid the thirty thousand francs without a word, just as he had formerly paid eight thousand for decorating La

On his return from the Luxembourg, where he had been presented according to custom by two of his

peersthe Baron de Nucingen and the Marquis de Montriveauthe new Count met the old Duc de

Chaulieu, a former creditor, walking along, umbrella in hand, while he himself sat perched in a low chaise on

which his coatofarms was resplendent, with the motto, Deo sic patet fides et hominibus. This contrast

filled his heart with a large draught of the balm on which the middle class has been getting drunk ever since

Madame de la Baudraye was shocked to see her husband improved and looking better than on the day of his

marriage. The little dwarf, full of rapturous delight, at sixtyfour triumphed in the life which had so long

been denied him; in the family, which his handsome cousin Milaud of Nevers had declared he would never

have; and in his wifewho had asked Monsieur and Madame de Clagny to dinner to meet the cure of the

parish and his two sponsors to the Chamber of Peers. He petted the children with fatuous delight.

"These are the fleeces of the Berry sheep," said he, showing Monsieur de Nucingen the dishcovers

Though consumed by melancholy, which she concealed with the determination of a really superior woman,

"You might declare," cried La Baudraye to Monsieur de Nucingen with a wave of his hand to his wife, "that

"Ah, ha! Matame is a voman of dirty!" replied the baron, who was prone to timehonored remarks, which he

"In every sense of the words," replied the Countess. "I am, in fact, fiveandthirty, and mean to set up a little

"She started that mania at an early age," said the Marquis de Montriveau with a smile.

"Yes," said La Baudraye, with a cold stare at the Marquis, whom he had known at Bourges, "you know that

in '25, '26, and '27, she picked a million francs' worth of treasures. Anzy is a perfect museum."

"What a cool hand!" thought Monsieur de Clagny, as he saw this little country miser quite on the level of his

On the day after the vote on the Regency had passed the Chambers, the little Count went back to Sancerre for

In the course of that winter, the Comtesse de la Baudraye, with the support of the AttorneyGeneral to the

Court of Appeals, tried to form a little circle. Of course, she had an "at home" day, she made a selection

among men of mark, receiving none but those of serious purpose and ripe years. She tried to amuse herself by

going to the Opera, French and Italian. Twice a week she appeared there with her mother and Madame de

Clagny, who was made by her husband to visit Dinah. Still, in spite of her cleverness, her charming manners,

her fashionable stylishness, she was never really happy but with her children, on whom she lavished all her

Worthy Monsieur de Clagny tried to recruit women for the Countess' circle, and he succeeded; but he was

"And they bore her!" said he to himself with horror, as he saw his idol matured by grief, pale from remorse,

and then, in all the splendor of recovered beauty, restored by a life of luxury and care for her boys. This

devoted friend, encouraged in his efforts by her mother and by the cure was full of expedient. Every

Wednesday he introduced some celebrity from Germany, England, Italy, or Prussia to his dear Countess; he

spoke of her as a quite exceptional woman to people to whom she hardly addressed two words; but she

listened to them with such deep attention that they went away fully convinced of her superiority. In Paris,

Dinah conquered by silence, as at Sancerre she had conquered by loquacity. Now and then, some smart

saying about affairs, or sarcasm on an absurdity, betrayed a woman accustomed to deal with ideasthe

This phase was to the poor lawyer's hapless passion like the late season known as the Indian summer after a

sunless year. He affected to be older than he was, to have the right to befriend Dinah without doing her an

injury, and kept himself at a distance as though he were young, handsome, and compromising, like a man

who has happiness to conceal. He tried to keep his little attentions a profound secret, and the trifling gifts

which Dinah showed to every one; he endeavored to suggest a dangerous meaning for his little services.

"He plays at passion," said the Countess, laughing. She made fun of Monsieur de Clagny to his face, and the

"I impress that poor man so deeply," said she to her mother, laughing, "that if I would say Yes, I believe he

One evening Monsieur de Clagny and his wife were taking his dear Countess home from the theatre, and she

was deeply pensive. They had been to the first performance of Leon Gozlan's first play, La Main Droite et la

"What are you thinking about?" asked the lawyer, alarmed at his idol's dejection.

This deep and persistent melancholy, though disguised by the Countess, was a perilous malady for which

Monsieur de Clagny knew no remedy; for true love is often clumsy, especially when it is not reciprocated.

True love takes its expression from the character. Now, this good man loved after the fashion of Alceste,

when Madame de la Baudraye wanted to be loved after the manner of Philinte. The meaner side of love can

never get on with the Misanthrope's loyalty. Thus, Dinah had taken care never to open her heart to this man.

How could she confess to him that she sometimes regretted the slough she had left?

She felt a void in this fashionable life; she had no one for whom to dress, or whom to tell of her successes and

triumphs. Sometimes the memory of her wretchedness came to her, mingled with memories of consuming

joys. She would hate Lousteau for not taking any pains to follow her; she would have liked to get tender or

Dinah made no reply, so Monsieur de Clagny repeated the question, taking the Countess' hand and pressing it

"Well, then, I saw him," she said, speaking into the lawyer's ear. "And as I saw him looking so sad, so out of

"If you wish for the truth, I can tell it you," said the lawyer. "He is living as a husband with Fanny Beaupre.

You have forced me to tell you this secret; I should never have told you, for you might have suspected me

She shrank into her corner, looking out of the window, but she did not finish her sentence, of which the

lawyer could guess the end: "Why had not Lousteau a little of your husband's generosity of heart?"

This information served, however, to cure Dinah of her melancholy; she threw herself into the whirl of

fashion. She wished for success, and she achieved it; still, she did not make much way with women, and

In the month of March, Madame Piedefer's friends the priests and Monsieur de Clagny made a fine stroke by

getting Madame de la Baudraye appointed receiver of subscriptions for the great charitable work founded by

Madame de Carcado. Then she was commissioned to collect from the Royal Family their donations for the

benefit of the sufferers from the earthquake at Guadeloupe. The Marquise d'Espard, to whom Monsieur de

Canalis read the list of ladies thus appointed, one evening at the Opera, said, on hearing that of the Countess:

"I have lived a long time in the world, and I can remember nothing finer than the manoeuvres undertaken for

In the early spring, which, by some whim of our planets, smiled on Paris in the first week of March in 1843,

making the ChampsElysees green and leafy before Longchamp, Fanny Beaupre's attache had seen Madame

de la Baudraye several times without being seen by her. More than once he was stung to the heart by one of

those promptings of jealousy and envy familiar to those who are born and bred provincials, when he beheld

his former mistress comfortably ensconced in a handsome carriage, well dressed, with dreamy eyes, and his

two little boys, one at each window. He accused himself with all the more virulence because he was waging

war with the sharpest poverty of allpoverty unconfessed. Like all essentially light and frivolous natures, he

cherished the singular point of honor which consists in never derogating in the eyes of one's own little public,

which makes men on the Bourse commit crimes to escape expulsion from the temple of the goddess

Lousteau dined and breakfasted and smoked as if he were a rich man. Not for an inheritance would he have

bought any but the dearest cigars, for himself as well as for the playwright or author with whom he went into

the shop. The journalist took his walks abroad in patent leather boots; but he was constantly afraid of an

execution on goods which, to use the bailiff's slang, had already received the last sacrament. Fanny Beaupre

had nothing left to pawn, and her salary was pledged to pay her debts. After exhausting every possible

advance of pay from newspapers, magazines, and publishers, Etienne knew not of what ink he could churn

gold. Gamblinghouses, so ruthlessly suppressed, could no longer, as of old, cash I O U's drawn over the

green table by beggary in despair. In short, the journalist was reduced to such extremity that he had just

borrowed a hundred francs of the poorest of his friends, Bixiou, from whom he had never yet asked for a

franc. What distressed Lousteau was not the fact of owing five thousand francs, but seeing himself bereft of

his elegance, and of the furniture purchased at the cost of so many privations, and added to by Madame de la

On April the 3rd, a yellow poster, torn down by the porter after being displayed on the wall, announced the

sale of a handsome suite of furniture on the following Saturday, the day fixed for sales under legal authority.

Lousteau was taking a walk, smoking cigars, and seeking ideasfor, in Paris, ideas are in the air, they smile

on you from a street corner, they splash up with a spurt of mud from under the wheels of a cab! Thus loafing,

he had been seeking ideas for articles, and subjects for novels for a month past, and had found nothing but

friends who carried him off to dinner or to the play, and who intoxicated his woes, telling him that

"Beware," said the virulent Bixiou one night, the man who would at the same moment give a comrade a

hundred francs and stab him to the heart with a sarcasm; "if you go to sleep drunk every night, one day you

On the day before, the Friday, the unhappy wretch, although he was accustomed to poverty, felt like a man

But he was incapable now of literary legerdemain. Publishers, undermined by piracy, paid badly; the

newspapers made close bargains with harddriven writers, as the Opera managers did with tenors that sang

He walked on, his eye on the crowd, though seeing nothing, a cigar in his mouth, and his hands in his

pockets, every feature of his face twitching, and an affected smile on his lips. Then he saw Madame de la

Baudraye go by in a carriage; she was going to the Boulevard by the Rue de la Chaussee d'Antin to drive in

"There is nothing else left!" said he to himself, and he went home to smarten himself up.

That evening, at seven, he arrived in a hackney cab at Madame de la Baudraye's door, and begged the porter

"Would Madame la Comtesse do Monsieur Lousteau the favor of receiving him for a moment, and at once?"

This note was sealed with a seal which as lovers they had both used. Madame de la Baudraye had had the

word Parce que engraved on a genuine Oriental carneliana potent worda woman's wordthe word that

The Countess had just finished dressing to go to the Opera; Friday was her night in turn for her box. At the

She was firm enough to conceal her agitation, and begged her mother to see the children put to bed. She then

sent for Lousteau, and received him in a boudoir, next to the great drawingroom, with open doors. She was

going to a ball after the Opera, and was wearing a beautiful dress of brocade in stripes alternately plain and

flowered with pale blue. Her gloves, trimmed with tassels, showed off her beautiful white arms. She was

shimmering with lace and all the dainty trifles required by fashion. Her hair, dressed a la Sevigne, gave her a

"What is the matter, monsieur?" said the Countess, putting out her foot from below her skirt to rest it on a

"If I should reply Never, you would refuse to believe me," said Lousteau, who remained standing, or walked

about the room, chewing the flowers he plucked from the flowerstands full of plants that scented the room.

For a moment silence reigned. Madame de la Baudraye, studying Lousteau, saw that he was dressed as the

"You are the only person in the world who can help me, or hold out a plank to mefor I am drowning, and

have already swallowed more than one mouthful" said he, standing still in front of Dinah, and seeming

to yield to an overpowering impulse. "Since you see me here, it is because my affairs are going to the devil."

There was another pause, during which Lousteau turned away, took out his handkerchief, and seemed to wipe

"How much do you want, Etienne," she went on in motherly tones. "We are at this moment old comrades;

"To save my furniture from vanishing into thin air tomorrow morning at the auction mart, eighteen hundred

francs! To repay my friends, as much again! Three quarters' rent to the landlord whom you know.My

"It is heavier to lift than any one could believe who reads your articles," said she, with a subtle smile."I

have not such a sum as you need, but come tomorrow at eight; the bailiff will surely wait till nine, especially

She must, she felt, dismiss Lousteau, who affected to be unable to look at her; she herself felt such pity as

"Thank you," she added, rising and offering her hand to Lousteau. "Your confidence has done me good! It is

"A drop of water in the desertand sent by the hand of an angel! God always does things handsomely!"

He spoke half in jest and half pathetically; but, believe me, as a piece of acting it was as fine as Talma's in his

famous part of Leicester, which was played throughout with touches of this kind. Dinah felt his heart beating

through his coat; it was throbbing with satisfaction, for the journalist had had a narrow escape from the hulks

of justice; but it also beat with a very natural fire at seeing Dinah rejuvenescent and restored by wealth.

Madame de la Baudraye, stealing an examining glance at Etienne, saw that his expression was in harmony

with the flowers of love, which, as she thought, had blossomed again in that throbbing heart; she tried to look

once into the eyes of the man she had loved so well, but the seething blood rushed through her veins and

mounted to her brain. Their eyes met with the same fiery glow as had encouraged Lousteau on the Quay by

the Loire to crumple Dinah's muslin gown. The Bohemian put his arm round her waist, she yielded, and their

"Here comes my mother, hide!" cried Dinah in alarm. And she hurried forward to intercept Madame Piedefer.

"Mamma," said shethis word was to the stern old lady a coaxing expression which never failed of its

effect"will you do me a great favor? Take the carriage and go yourself to my banker, Monsieur Mongenod,

with a note I will give you, and bring back six thousand francs. Come, comeit is an act of charity; come

And she dragged away her mother, who seemed very anxious to see who it was that her daughter had been

Two days afterwards, Madame Piedefer held a conference with the cure of the parish. After listening to the

lamentations of the old mother, who was in despair, the priest said very gravely:

"Any moral regeneration which is not based on a strong religious sentiment, and carried out in the bosom of

the Church, is built on sand.The many means of grace enjoined by the Catholic religion, small as they are,

and not understood, are so many dams necessary to restrain the violence of evil promptings. Persuade your

Within ten days of this meeting the Hotel de la Baudraye was shut up. The Countess, the children, and her

mother, in short, the whole household, including a tutor, had gone away to Sancerre, where Dinah intended to

And so the Muse of Sancerre had simply come back to family and married life; but certain evil tongues

declared that she had been compelled to come back, for that the little peer's wishes would no doubt be

Gatien and Monsieur Gravier lavished every care, every servile attention on the handsome Countess. Gatien,

who during Madame de la Baudraye's long absence had been to Paris to learn the art of lionnerie or

dandyism, was supposed to have a good chance of finding favor in the eyes of the disenchanted "Superior

In 1844, about the middle of June, as the Comte de la Baudraye was taking a walk on the Mall at Sancerre

with the two fine little boys, he met Monsieur Milaud, the Public Prosecutor, who was at Sancerre on

"Ah, ha! so these are our children!" replied the lawyer, with a mischievous twinkle.

Bianchon, Horace Father Goriot The Atheist's Mass Cesar Birotteau The Commission in Lunacy Lost

Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment The Secrets of a Princess The

Government Clerks Pierrette A Study of Woman Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Honorine The Seamy Side

of History The Magic Skin A Second Home A Prince of Bohemia Letters of Two Brides The Imaginary

Mistress The Middle Classes Cousin Betty The Country Parson In addition, M. Bianchon narrated the

Bixiou, JeanJacques The Purse A Bachelor's Establishment The Government Clerks Modeste Mignon

Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Firm of Nucingen Cousin Betty The Member for Arcis Beatrix A Man of

Camusot A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment Cousin Pons Cesar Birotteau At the

Cardot (Parisian notary) A Man of Business Jealousies of a Country Town Pierre Grassou The Middle

Lousteau, Etienne A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's Establishment Scenes from a Courtesan's

Life A Daughter of Eve Beatrix Cousin Betty A Prince of Bohemia A Man of Business The Middle Classes

Lupeaulx, Clement Chardin des Eugenie Grandet A Bachelor's Establishment A Distinguished Provincial at

Maufrigneuse, Duchesse de The Secrets of a Princess Modeste Mignon Jealousies of a Country Town Scenes

from a Courtesan's Life Letters of Two Brides Another Study of Woman The Gondreville Mystery The

Nathan, Raoul Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Secrets

of a Princess A Daughter of Eve Letters of Two Brides The Seamy Side of History A Prince of Bohemia A

Nathan, Madame Raoul Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life

The Government Clerks A Bachelor's Establishment Ursule Mirouet Eugenie Grandet The Imaginary

Navarreins, Duc de A Bachelor's Establishment Colonel Chabert The Thirteen Jealousies of a Country Town

The Peasantry Scenes from a Courtesan's Life The Country Parson The Magic Skin The Gondreville Mystery

Nucingen, Baron Frederic de The Firm of Nucingen Father Goriot Pierrette Cesar Birotteau Lost Illusions A

Distinguished Provincial at Paris Scenes from a Courtesan's Life Another Study of Woman The Secrets of a

Touches, Mademoiselle Felicite des Beatrix Lost Illusions A Distinguished Provincial at Paris A Bachelor's