Kitabı oku: «Parisians in the Country», sayfa 10

“Well, and then?” said such of the audience as understood.

“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 Barthelemy-Hadot, or the late lamented Desforges, or Sewrin.”

“‘Adolphe was silent.’ – Ah!” cried Bianchon, “the Duchess must have been under thirty.”

“If there is no more, invent a conclusion,” said Madame de la Baudraye.

“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 making-up 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 Pasha condemned you to have fifty on the soles of your feet.”

“I am quite bewildered,” said Madame Popinot-Chandier to Monsieur Gravier. “I am vainly trying to connect the Councillor of State, the Cardinal, the key, and the making-up – ”

“You have not the key to the jest,” said Monsieur Gravier. “Well! no more have I, fair lady, if that can comfort you.”

“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 clue to the mystery.

OR ROMAN REVENGE 21

corridor; but finding that he was pursued by the Duchess’ people

“Oh, get along!”

“But,” said Madame de la Baudraye, “some important events have taken place between your waste sheet and this page.”

“This complete sheet, madame, this precious made-up sheet. But does the waste sheet in which the Duchess forgets her gloves in the arbor belong to the fourth volume? Well, deuce take it – to proceed.

Rinaldo saw no safer refuge than to make forthwith for the cellar where the treasures of the Bracciano family 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 bestowed on him by nature, discovered the door concealed in the stonework, and suddenly vanished. A hideous thought then flashed on Rinaldo’s brain like lightning rending a cloud: He was imprisoned!

He felt the wall with uneasy haste

“Yes, this made-up 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 now – on the made-up sheet – in 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 night – one o’clock in the morning. Rinaldo will have a good time.”

“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 Quay – ”

“What quay?” a lady asked of her neighbor. “They spoke of baths – ”

“Pray go on,” said Madame de la Baudraye.

“At any rate, it is not by a councillor,” said Bianchon.

“It may be by Madame Hadot,” replied Lousteau.

“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 Consulate.”

“What, did women write in the Emperor’s time?” asked Madame Popinot-Chandier.

“What of Madame de Genlis and Madame de Stael?” cried the Public Prosecutor, piqued on Dinah’s account by this remark.

“To be sure!”

“I beg you to go on,” said Madame de la Baudraye to Lousteau.

Lousteau went on saying: “Page 218.

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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.

Then he gave a hollow roar like that of a hyaena —

“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, as we see in the word hollow.”

“Make no more comments, monsieur,” said Madame de la Baudraye.

“There, you see!” cried Bianchon. “Interest, the romantic demon, has you by the collar, as he had me a while ago.”

“Read on,” cried de Clagny, “I understand.”

“What a coxcomb!” said the Presiding Judge in a whisper to his neighbor the Sous-prefet.

“He wants to please Madame de la Baudraye,” replied the new Sous-prefet.

“Well, then I will read straight on,” said Lousteau solemnly.

Everybody listened in dead silence.

OR ROMAN REVENGE 219

A deep groan answered Rinaldo’s

cry, but in his alarm he took it for an echo, so weak and hollow was the sound. It could not proceed from any human breast.

“Santa Maria!” said the voice.

“If I stir from this spot I shall never find it again,” thought Rinaldo, when he had recovered his usual presence of mind. “If I knock, I shall be discovered. What am I to do?”

“Who is here?” asked the voice.

“Hallo!” cried the brigand; “do the toads here talk?”

“I am the Duke of Bracciano.

Whoever you may be, if you are not a follower of the Duchess’, in the name of all the saints, come towards me.”

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“I should have to know where to find you, Monsieur le Duc,” said Rinaldo, with the insolence of a man who knows himself to be necessary.

“I can see you, my friend, for my eyes are accustomed to the darkness. Listen: walk straight forward – good; now turn to the left – come on – this way. There, we are close to each other.”

Rinaldo putting out his hands as a precaution, touched some iron bars.

“I am being deceived,” cried the bandit.

“No, you are touching my cage.

OR ROMAN REVENGE 221

Sit down on a broken shaft of porphyry that is there.”

“How can the Duke of Bracciano be in a cage?” asked the brigand.

“My friend, I have been here for thirty months, standing up, unable to sit down – But you, who are you?”

“I am Rinaldo, prince of the Campagna, the chief of four-and-twenty 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 understanding with you,” cried the Duke. “Oh, my worthy

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deliverer, you must be armed to the teeth.”

“E verissimo” (most true).

“Do you happen to have – ”

“Yes, files, pincers —Corpo di Bacco! I came to borrow the treasures 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 hunting together – ”

“You surprise me, Eccellenza!”

“Listen to me, Rinaldo. I will say nothing of the craving for vengeance that gnaws at my heart.

I have been here for thirty months – you too are Italian – you will un-

OR ROMAN REVENGE 223

derstand me! Alas, my friend, my fatigue and my horrible incarceration 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 loved her well enough to be jealous – ”

“You, her husband!”

“Yes, I was wrong, no doubt.”

“It is not the correct thing, to be sure,” said Rinaldo.

“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 barbarians make words sparkle.”

“Like a hair in a frost,” said Monsieur de Clagny.

“So those are the airs you affect?”³ retorted Lousteau.

“What can he mean?” asked Madame de Clagny, puzzled by this vile pun.

“I seem to be walking in the dark,” replied the Mayoress.

“The jest would be lost in an explanation,” remarked Gatien.

“Nowadays,” Lousteau went on, “a novelist draws characters, and instead of a ‘simple outline,’ he unveils the human heart and gives you some interest either in Lubin or in Toinette.”

“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 ideas – zero; 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 one – wit or learning, style or feeling – these cripples, these acephalous, maimed or purblind creatures – in a literary sense – have taken to shrieking that all is lost, and have preached a crusade against men who were spoiling the business, or have denounced their works.”

“The history of your last literary quarrel!” Dinah observed.

“For pity’s sake, come back to the Duke of Bracciano,” cried Monsieur de Clagny.

To the despair of all the company, Lousteau went on with the made-up sheet.

224 OLYMPIA

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 possession of me. She was a woman, and she won the day; for women have a snare more than we men. I fell into it – I was happy; but I awoke next day in this iron cage. All through the day I bellowed with rage in the

OR ROMAN REVENGE 225

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 daily pittance.

“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

226 OLYMPIA

poison I had prepared for her and her lover. I crave it for myself, but she will not let me die; she gives me bread, and I eat it.

“I have done well to eat and live; I had not reckoned on robbers!”

“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 everything – even to my Duchy – ”

“Eccellenza, procure from the Pope an absolution in articulo mortis. It would be of more use to me in my walk of life.”

OR ROMAN REVENGE 227

“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.”

“Eccellenza,” said Rinaldo, “I have already filed through one bar.”

“You are a god!”

“Your wife was at the fete given by the Princess Villaviciosa. She brought home her little Frenchman; she is drunk with love. – You have plenty of time.”

“Have you done?”

“Yes.”

228 OLYMPIA

“Your dagger?” said the Duke eagerly to the brigand.

“Here it is.”

“Good. I hear the clatter of the spring.”

“Do not forget me!” cried the robber, who knew what gratitude was.

“No more than my father,” cried the Duke.

“Good-bye!” said Rinaldo. “Lord! How he flies up!” he added to himself as the Duke disappeared. – “No more than his father! If that is all he means to do for me. – And I

OR ROMAN REVENGE 229

had sworn a vow never to injure a woman!”

But let us leave the robber for a moment to his meditations and go up, like the Duke, to the rooms in the palace.

“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 novelist —Conclusion!

CONCLUSION

Never had the Duchess been more lovely; she came from her bath clothed like a goddess, and on seeing

234 OLYMPIA

Adolphe voluptuously reclining on piles of cushions —

“You are beautiful,” said she.

“And so are you, Olympia!”

“And you still love me?”

“More and more,” said he.

“Ah, none but a Frenchman knows how to love!” cried the Duchess. “Do you love me well tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Then come!”

And with an impulse of love and hate – whether it was that Cardinal Borborigano had reminded her of her husband, or that she felt unwonted 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 to show that the author was full of promise.”

“I cannot make head or tail of it,” said Gatien Boirouge, who was the first to break the silence of the party from Sancerre.

“Nor I,” replied Monsieur Gravier.

“And yet it is a novel of the time of the Empire,” said Lousteau.

“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 prescriptions you write are worth more than all that rubbish.”

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 husbands. What do you say to those invented by wives?”

“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 Prometheus) of Camille de Maupin.”

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 her – and do you call that revenge? – Our laws and our society are far more cruel.”

“Why, little La Baudraye is talking!” said Monsieur Boirouge to his wife.

“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 her – the two things which, in my opinion, are the sum-total of woman,” said the little old man.

“But she has happiness!” said Madame de la Baudraye sententiously.

“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 vine-stocks and poles, he has some spunk,” said Lousteau.

“Well, he must have something!” replied Bianchon.

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 wrinkles had been puzzling him all day.

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 newspaper-rather than the prescription-writer! In fact, Dinah, herself famous, was naturally more alive to wit than to fame. Love generally prefers contrast to similitude. Everything was against the physician – his frankness, his simplicity, and his profession. And this is why: Women who want to love – and Dinah wanted to love as much as to be loved – have 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 half-idle 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 like him.”

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 catastrophes – having 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 journalist’s great amazement.

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 Sous-prefet, the Presiding Judge, and his deputy, Lebas, had discovered there – to say nothing of Monsieur de la Baudraye and Dinah – the ladies now gathered round the tea-table, 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 laughing-stock for Paris folks.

Madame Piedefer left the table to say to her daughter, “Do go and talk to the ladies; they are quite annoyed by your behavior.”

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 candlelight – in short, she stood out against this background of old faces, shy and ill-dressed 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 one – for they had an hour’s drive before them – when no one remained in the drawing-room but Monsieur de Clagny, Monsieur Lebas, Gatien, and Monsieur Gravier, who were all to sleep at Anzy – the 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 drawing-room after seeing the President and the Presidente to their carriage with Madame and Mademoiselle Popinot-Chandier.

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 comments on the paper wrapped round the proofs.

“My dear fellow,” said Bianchon to Lousteau as they went to bed – they had an enormous room with two beds in it – “you will be the happy man of this woman’s choice —nee Piedefer!”

“Do you think so?”

“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 favor – something 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 world-worn heart?”

“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 ignorance, that you have given Dinah. She is handsome, is she not?”

“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 life-interest 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 bed-clothes, “and to-morrow, with your help – yes, to-morrow, I – well, good-night.”

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 perceived – bronze 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 war-paint – patent 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 short black riding-coat.

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 from smiling as he heard Monsieur de Clagny say to Monsieur Gravier:

“You should have escorted them on horseback.”

At this juncture, Gatien, riding Monsieur de la Baudraye’s quiet little mare, came out of the side road from the stables and joined the party in the chaise.

“Ah, good,” said the Receiver-General, “the boy has mounted guard.”

“What a bore!” cried Dinah as she saw Gatien. “In thirteen years – for I have been married nearly thirteen years – I have never had three hours’ liberty.

“Married, madame?” said the journalist with a smile. “You remind me of a saying of Michaud’s – he 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.’”

Even the rigid Madame Piedefer could not repress a smile.

“I should not be surprised to see Monsieur de Clagny mounted on my pony to complete the escort,” said Dinah.

“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 table – the notes for the first lecture of his course – and you can ask Gatien to go back to Anzy to fetch it.”

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 whirlwind of which God alone would ever know the secret!

“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 not take the part of her adorers.

“I perfectly understand the position you have maintained,” said the doctor as they crossed the Loire. “You were inaccessible excepting to that brain-love which often leads to heart-love; 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 refined woman. To you, now, love is indispensable.”