IV

"It had been Godefroid's privilege to run over Europe," resumed

Bixiou, "nor had he neglected his opportunities of making a thorough

comparative study of European dancing. Perhaps but for profound

diligence in the pursuit of what is usually held to be useless

knowledge, he would never have fallen in love with this young lady; as

it was, out of the three hundred guests that crowded the handsome

rooms in the Rue Saint-Lazare, he alone comprehended the unpublished

romance revealed by a garrulous quadrille. People certainly noticed

Isaure d'Aldrigger's dancing; but in this present century the cry is

'Skim lightly over the surface, do not lean your weight on it;' so one

said (he was a notary's clerk), 'There is a girl that dances

uncommonly well;' another (a lady in a turban), 'There is a young lady

that dances enchantingly;' and a third (a woman of thirty), 'That

little thing is not dancing badly.'But to return to the great

Marcel, let us parody his best known saying with, 'How much there is

in an avant-deux.' "

"And let us get on a little faster," said Blondet; "you are

maundering."

"Isaure," continued Bixiou, looking askance at Blondet, "wore a simple

white crepe dress with green ribbons; she had a camellia in her hair,

a camellia at her waist, another camellia at her skirt-hem, and a

camellia"

"Come, now! here comes Sancho's three hundred goats."

"Therein lies all literature, dear boy. Clarissa is a masterpiece,

there are fourteen volumes of her, and the most wooden-headed

playwright would give you the whole of Clarissa in a single act. So

long as I amuse you, what have you to complain of? That costume was

positively lovely. Don't you like camillias? Would you rather have

dahlias? No? Very good, chestnuts then, here's for you." (And probably

Bixiou flung a chestnut across the table, for we heard something drop

on a plate.)

"I was wrong, I acknowledge it. Go on," said Blondet.

"I resume. 'Pretty enough to marry, isn't she?' said Rastignac, coming

up to Godefroid de Beaudenord, and indicating the little one with the

spotless white camellias, every petal intact.

"Rastignac being an intimate friend, Godefroid answered in a low

voice, 'Well, so I was thinking. I was saying to myself that instead

of enjoying my happiness with fear and trembling at every moment;

instead of taking a world of trouble to whisper a word in an

inattentive ear, of looking over the house at the Italiens to see if

some one wears a red flower or a white in her hair, or watching along

the Corso for a gloved hand on a carriage door, as we used to do at

Milan; instead of snatching a mouthful of baba like a lackey finishing

off a bottle behind a door, or wearing out one's wits with giving and

receiving letters like a postmanletters that consist not of a mere

couple of tender lines, but expand to five folio volumes to-day and

contract to a couple of sheets to-morrow (a tiresome practice);

instead of dragging along over the ruts and dodging behind hedgesit

would be better to give way to the adorable passion that Jean-Jacques

Rousseau envied, to fall frankly in love with a girl like Isaure, with

a view to making her my wife, if upon exchange of sentiments our

hearts respond to each other; to be Werther, in short, with a happy

ending.'

" 'Which is a common weakness,' returned Rastignac without laughing.

'Possibly in your place I might plunge into the unspeakable delights

of that ascetic course; it possesses the merits of novelty and

originality, and it is not very expensive. Your Monna Lisa is sweet,

but inane as music for the ballet; I give you warning.'

"Rastignac made this last remark in a way which set Beaudenord

thinking that his friend had his own motives for disenchanting him;

Beaudenord had not been a diplomatist for nothing; he fancied that

Rastignac wanted to cut him out. If a man mistakes his vocation, the

false start none the less influences him for the rest of his life.

Godefroid was so evidently smitten with Mlle. Isaure d'Aldrigger, that

Rastignac went off to a tall girl chatting in the card-room.

'Malvina,' he said, lowering his voice, 'your sister has just netted a

fish worth eighteen thousand francs a year. He has a name, a manner,

and a certain position in the world; keep an eye on them; be careful

to gain Isaure's confidence; and if they philander, do not let her

send word to him unless you have seen it first'

"Towards two o'clock in the morning, Isaure was standing beside a

diminutive Shepherdess of the Alps, a little woman of forty,

coquettish as a Zerlina. A footman announced that 'Mme. la Baronne's

carriage stops the way,' and Godefroid forthwith saw his beautiful

maiden out of a German song draw her fantastical mother into the

cloakroom, whither Malvina followed them; and (boy that he was) he

must needs go to discover into what pot of preserves the infant Joby

had fallen, and had the pleasure of watching Isaure and Malvina

coaxing that sparkling person, their mamma, into her pelisse, with all

the little tender precautions required for a night journey in Paris.

Of course, the girls on their side watched Beaudenord out of the

corners of their eyes, as well-taught kittens watch a mouse, without

seeming to see it at all. With a certain satisfaction Beaudenord noted

the bearing, manner, and appearance, of the tall well-gloved Alsacien

servant in livery who brought three pairs of fur-lined overshoes for

his mistresses.

"Never were two sisters more unlike than Isaure and Malvina. Malvina

the elder was tall and dark-haired, Isaure was short and fair, and her

features were finely and delicately cut, while her sister's were

vigorous and striking. Isaure was one of those women who reign like

queens through their weakness, such a woman as a schoolboy would feel

it incumbent upon him to protect; Malvina was the Andalouse of

Musset's poem. As the sisters stood together, Isaure looked like a

miniature beside a portrait in oils.

" 'She is rich!' exclaimed Godefroid, going back to Rastignac in the

ballroom.

" 'Who?'

" 'That young lady.'

" 'Oh, Isaure d'Aldrigger? Why, yes. The mother is a widow; Nucingen

was once a clerk in her husband's bank at Strasbourg. Do you want to

see them again? Just turn off a compliment for Mme. de Restaud; she is

giving a ball the day after to-morrow; the Baroness d'Aldrigger and

her two daughters will be there. You will have an invitation.'

"For three days Godefroid beheld Isaure in the camera obscura of his

brainHIS Isaure with her white camellias and the little ways she had

with her headsaw her as you see the bright thing on which you have

been gazing after your eyes are shut, a picture grown somewhat

smaller; a radiant, brightly-colored vision flashing out of a vortex

of darkness."

"Bixiou, you are dropping into phenomena, block us out our pictures,"

put in Couture.

"Here you are, gentlemen! Here is the picture you ordered!" (from the

tones of Bixiou's voice, he evidently was posing as a waiter.) "Finot,

attention, one has to pull at your mouth as a jarvie pulls at his

jade. In Madame Theodora Marguerite Wilhelmine Adolphus (of the firm

of Adolphus and Company, Manheim), relict of the late Baron

d'Aldrigger, you might expect to find a stout, comfortable German,

compact and prudent, with a fair complexion mellowed to the tint of

the foam on a pot of beer; and as to virtues, rich in all the

patriarchal good qualities that Germany possessesin romances, that

is to say. Well there was not a gray hair in the frisky ringlets that

she wore on either side of her face; she was still as fresh and as

brightly colored on the cheek-bone as a Nuremberg doll; her eyes were

lively and bright; a closely-fitting bodice set off the slenderness of

her waist. Her brow and temples were furrowed by a few involuntary

wrinkles which, like Ninon, she would fain have banished from her head

to her heel, but they persisted in tracing their zigzags in the more

conspicuous place. The outlines of the nose had somewhat fallen away,

and the tip had reddened, and this was the more awkward because it

matched the color on the cheek-bones.

"An only daughter and an heiress, spoilt by her father and mother,

spoilt by her husband and the city of Strasbourg, spoilt still by two

daughters who worshiped their mother, the Baroness d'Aldrigger

indulged a taste for rose color, short petticoats, and a knot of

ribbon at the point of the tightly-fitting corselet bodice. Any

Parisian meeting the Baroness on the boulevard would smile and condemn

her outright; he does not admit any plea of extenuating circumstances,

like a modern jury on a case of fratricide. A scoffer is always

superficial, and in consequence cruel; the rascal never thinks of

throwing the proper share of ridicule on society that made the

individual what he is; for Nature only makes dull animals of us, we

owe the fool to artificial conditions."

"The thing that I admire about Bixiou is his completeness," said

Blondet; "whenever he is not gibing at others, he is laughing at

himself."

"I will be even with you for that, Blondet," returned Bixiou in a

significant tone. "If the little Baroness was giddy, careless,

selfish, and incapable in practical matters, she was not accountable

for her sins; the responsibility is divided between the firm of

Adolphus and Company of Manheim and Baron d'Aldrigger with his blind

love for his wife. The Baroness was a gentle as a lamb; she had a soft

heart that was very readily moved; unluckily, the emotion never lasted

long, but it was all the more frequently renewed.

"When the Baron died, for instance, the Shepherdess all but followed

him to the tomb, so violent and sincere was her grief, butnext

morning there was green peas at lunch, she was fond of green peas, the

delicious green peas calmed the crisis. Her daughters and her servants

loved her so blindly that the whole household rejoiced over a

circumstance that enabled them to hide the dolorous spectacle of the

funeral from the sorrowing Baroness. Isaure and Malvina would not

allow their idolized mother to see their tears.

"While the Requiem was chanted, they diverted her thoughts to the

choice of mourning dresses. While the coffin was placed in the huge,

black and white, wax-besprinkled catafalque that does duty for some

three thousand dead in the course of its careerso I was informed by

a philosophically-minded mute whom I once consulted on a point over a

couple of glasses of petit blancwhile an indifferent priest mumbling

the office for the dead, do you know what the friends of the departed

were saying as, all dressed in black from head to foot, they sat or

stood in the church? (Here is the picture you ordered.) Stay, do you

see them?

" 'How much do you suppose old d'Aldrigger will leave?' Desroches

asked of Taillefer.You remember Taillefer that gave us the finest

orgy ever known not long before he died?"

"He was in treaty for practice in 1822," said Couture. "It was a bold

thing to do, for he was the son of a poor clerk who never made more

than eighteen hundred francs a year, and his mother sold stamped

paper. But he worked very hard from 1818 to 1822. He was Derville's

fourth clerk when he came; and in 1819 he was second!"

"Desroches?"

"Yes. Desroches, like the rest of us, once groveled in the poverty of

Job. He grew so tired of wearing coats too tight and sleeves too short

for him, that he swallowed down the law in desperation and had just

bought a bare license. He was a licensed attorney, without a penny, or

a client, or any friends beyond our set; and he was bound to pay

interest on the purchase-money and the cautionary deposit besides."

"He used to make me feel as if I had met a tiger escaped from the

Jardin des Plantes," said Couture. "He was lean and red-haired, his

eyes were the color of Spanish snuff, and his complexion was harsh. He

looked cold and phlegmatic. He was hard upon the widow, pitiless to

the orphan, and a terror to his clerks; they were not allowed to waste

a minute. Learned, crafty, double-faced, honey-tongued, never flying

into a passion, rancorous in his judicial way."

"But there is goodness in him," cried Finot; "he is devoted to his

friends. The first thing he did was to take Godeschal, Mariette's

brother, as his head-clerk."

"At Paris," said Blondet, "there are attorneys of two shades. There is

the honest man attorney; he abides within the province of the law,

pushes on his cases, neglects no one, never runs after business, gives

his clients his honest opinion, and makes them compromise on doubtful

pointshe is a Derville, in short. Then there is the starveling

attorney, to whom anything seems good provided that he is sure of

expenses; he will set, not mountains fighting, for he sells them, but

planets; he will work to make the worse appear the better cause, and

take advantage of a technical error to win the day for a rogue. If one

of these fellows tries one of Maitre Gonin's tricks once too often,

the guild forces him to sell his connection. Desroches, our friend

Desroches, understood the full resources of a trade carried on in a

beggarly way enough by poor devils; he would buy up causes of men who

feared to lose the day; he plunged into chicanery with a fixed

determination to make money by it. He was right; he did his business

very honestly. He found influence among men in public life by getting

them out of awkward complications; there was our dear les Lupeaulx,

for instance, whose position was so deeply compromised. And Desroches

stood in need of influence; for when he began, he was anything but

well looked on at the court, and he who took so much trouble to

rectify the errors of his clients was often in trouble himself. See

now, Bixiou, to go back to the subjectHow came Desroches to be in

the church?"

" 'D'Aldrigger is leaving seven or eight hundred thousand francs,'

Taillefer answered, addressing Desroches.

" 'Oh, pooh, there is only one man who knows how much THEY are worth,'

put in Werbrust, a friend of the deceased.

" 'Who?'

" 'That fat rogue Nucingen; he will go as far as the cemetery;

d'Aldrigger was his master once, and out of gratitude he put the old

man's capital into his business.'

" 'The widow will soon feel a great difference.'

" 'What do you mean?'

" 'Well, d'Aldrigger was so fond of his wife. Now, don't laugh, people

are looking at us.'

" 'Look here comes du Tillet; he is very late. The epistle is just

beginning.'

" 'He will marry the eldest girl in all probability.'

" 'Is it possible?' asked Desroches; 'why, he is tied more than ever

to Mme. Roguin.'

" 'TIEDhe?You do not know him.'

" 'Do you know how Nucingen and du Tillet stand?' asked Desroches.

" 'Like this,' said Taillefer; 'Nucingen is just the man to swallow

down his old master's capital, and then to disgorge it.'

" 'Ugh! ugh!' coughed Werbrust, 'these churches are confoundedly damp;

ugh! ugh! What do you mean by "disgorge it"?'

" 'Well, Nucingen knows that du Tillet has a lot of money; he wants to

marry him to Malvina; but du Tillet is shy of Nucingen. To a looker-

on, the game is good fun.'

" 'What!' exclaimed Werbrust, 'is she old enough to marry? How quickly

we grow old!'

" 'Malvina d'Aldrigger is quite twenty years old, my dear fellow. Old

d'Aldrigger was married in 1800. He gave some rather fine

entertainments in Strasbourg at the time of his wedding, and

afterwards when Malvina was born. That was in 1801 at the peace of

Amiens, and here are we in the year 1823, Daddy Werbrust! In those

days everything was Ossianized; he called his daughter Malvina. Six

years afterwards there was a rage for chivalry, Partant pour la Syrie

a pack of nonsenseand he christened his second daughter Isaure.

She is seventeen. So there are two daughters to marry.'

" 'The women will not have a penny left in ten years' time,' said

Werbrust, speaking to Desroches in a confidential tone.

" 'There is d'Aldrigger's man-servant, the old fellow bellowing away

at the back of the church; he has been with them since the two young

ladies were children, and he is capable of anything to keep enough

together for them to live upon,' said Taillefer.

"Dies iroe! (from the minor cannons). Dies illa! (from the

choristers).

" 'Good-day, Werbrust (from Taillefer), the Dies iroe puts me too much

in mind of my poor boy.'

" 'I shall go too; it is too damp in here,' said Werbrust.

"In favilla.

" 'A few halfpence, kind gentlemen!' (from the beggars at the door).

" 'For the expenses of the church!' (from the beadle, with a rattling

clatter of the money-box).

" 'AMEN' (from the choristers).

" 'What did he die of?' (from a friend).

" 'He broke a blood-vessel in the heel' (from an inquisitive wag).

" 'Who is dead?' (from a passer-by).

" 'The President de Montesquieu!' (from a relative).

"The sacristan to the poor, 'Get away, all of you; the money for you

has been given to us; don't ask for any more.' "

"Done to the life!" cried Couture. And indeed it seemed to us that we

heard all that went on in the church. Bixiou imitated everything, even

the shuffling sound of the feet of the men that carried the coffin

over the stone floor.

"There are poets and romancers and writers that say many fine things

abut Parisian manners," continued Bixiou, "but that is what really

happens at a funeral. Ninety-nine out of a hundred that come to pay

their respects to some poor devil departed, get together and talk

business or pleasure in the middle of the church. To see some poor

little touch of real sorrow, you need an impossible combination of

circumstances. And, after all, is there such a thing as grief without

a thought of self in it?"

"Ugh!" said Blondet. "Nothing is less respected than death; is it that

there is nothing less respectable?"

"It is so common!" resumed Bixiou. "When the service was over Nucingen

and du Tillet went to the graveside. The old man-servant walked;

Nucingen and du Tillet were put at the head of the procession of

mourning coaches.'Goot, mein goot friend,' said Nucingen as they

turned into the boulevard. 'It ees a goot time to marry Malfina; you

vill be der brodector off that boor family vat ess in tears; you vill

haf ein family, a home off your own; you vill haf a house ready

vurnished, und Malfina is truly ein dreashure.' "

"I seem to hear that old Robert Macaire of a Nucingen himself," said

Finot.

" 'A charming girl,' said Ferdinand du Tillet in a cool,

unenthusiastic tone," Bixiou continued.

"Just du Tillet himself summed up in a word!" cried Couture.

" 'Those that do not know her may think her plain,' pursued du Tillet,

'but she has character, I admit.'

" 'Und ein herz, dot is the pest of die pizness, mein der poy; she

vould make you an indelligent und defoted vife. In our beastly

pizness, nopody cares to know who lifs or dies; it is a crate plessing

gif a mann kann put drust in his vife's heart. Mein Telvine prouht me

more as a million, as you know, but I should gladly gif her for

Malfina dot haf not so pig a DOT.'

" 'But how much has she?'

" 'I do not know precisely; boot she haf somdings.'

" 'Yes, she has a mother with a great liking for rose-color.' said du

Tillet; and with that epigram he cut Nucingen's diplomatic efforts

short.

"After dinner the Baron de Nucingen informed Wilhelmine Adolphus that

she had barely four hundred thousand francs deposited with him. The

daughter of Adolphus of Manheim, thus reduced to an income of twenty-

four thousand livres, lost herself in arithmetical exercises that

muddled her wits.

" 'I have ALWAYS had six thousand francs for our dress allowance,' she

said to Malvina. 'Why, how did your father find money? We shall have

nothing now with twenty-four thousand francs; it is destitution! Oh!

if my father could see me so come down in the world, it would kill him

if he were not dead already! Poor Wilhelmine!' and she began to cry.

"Malvina, puzzled to know how to comfort her mother, represented to

her that she was still young and pretty, that rose-color still became

her, that she could continue to go to the Opera and the Bouffons,

where Mme. de Nucingen had a box. And so with visions of gaieties,

dances, music, pretty dresses, and social success, the Baroness was

lulled to sleep and pleasant dreams in the blue, silk-curtained bed in

the charming room next to the chamber in which Jean Baptiste, Baron

d'Aldrigger, had breathed his last but two nights ago.

"Here in a few words is the Baron's history. During his lifetime that

worthy Alsacien accumulated about three millions of francs. In 1800,

at the age of thirty-six, in the apogee of a fortune made during the

Revolution, he made a marriage partly of ambition, partly of

inclination, with the heiress of the family of Adolphus of Manheim.

Wilhelmine, being the idol of her whole family, naturally inherited

their wealth after some ten years. Next, d'Aldrigger's fortune being

doubled, he was transformed into a Baron by His Majesty, Emperor and

King, and forthwith became a fanatical admirer of the great man to

whom he owed his title. Wherefore, between 1814 and 1815 he ruined

himself by a too serious belief in the sun of Austerlitz. Honest

Alsacien as he was, he did not suspend payment, nor did he give his

creditors shares in doubtful concerns by way of settlement. He paid

everything over the counter, and retired from business, thoroughly

deserving Nucingen's comment on his behavior'Honest but stoobid.'

"All claims satisfied, there remained to him five hundred thousand

francs and certain receipts for sums advanced to that Imperial

Government, which had ceased to exist. 'See vat komms of too much

pelief in Nappolion,' said he, when he had realized all his capital.

"When you have been one of the leading men in a place, how are you to

remain in it when your estate has dwindled? D'Aldrigger, like all

ruined provincials, removed to Paris, there intrepidly wore the

tricolor braces embroidered with Imperial eagles, and lived entirely

in Bonapartist circles. His capital he handed over to Nucingen, who

gave him eight per cent upon it, and took over the loans to the

Imperial Government at a mere sixty per cent of reduction; wherefore

d'Aldrigger squeezed Nucingen's hand and said, 'I knew dot in you I

should find de heart of ein Elzacien.'

"(Nucingen was paid in full through our friend des Lupeaulx.) Well

fleeced as d'Aldrigger had been, he still possessed an income of

forty-four thousand francs; but his mortification was further

complicated by the spleen which lies in wait for the business man so

soon as he retires from business. He set himself, noble heart, to

sacrifice himself to his wife, now that her fortune was lost, that

fortune of which she had allowed herself to be despoiled so easily,

after the manner of a girl entirely ignorant of money matters. Mme.

d'Aldrigger accordingly missed not a single pleasure to which she had

been accustomed; any void caused by the loss of Strasbourg

acquaintances were speedily filled, and more than filled, with Paris

gaieties.

"Even then as now the Nucingens lived at the higher end of financial

society, and the Baron de Nucingen made it a point of honor to treat

the honest banker well. His disinterested virtue looked well in the

Nucingen salon.

"Every winter dipped into d'Aldrigger's principal, but he did not

venture to remonstrate with his pearl of a Wilhelmine. His was the

most ingenious unintelligent tenderness in the world. A good man, but

a stupid one! 'What will become of them when I am gone?' he said, as

he lay dying; and when he was left alone for a moment with Wirth, his

old man-servant, he struggled for breath to bid him take care of his

mistress and her two daughters, as if the one reasonable being in the

house was this Alsacien Caleb Balderstone.

"Three years afterwards, in 1826, Isaure was twenty years old, and

Malvina still unmarried. Malvina had gone into society, and in course

of time discovered for herself how superficial their friendships were,

how accurately every one was weighed and appraised. Like most girls

that have been 'well brought up,' as we say, Malvina had no idea of

the mechanism of life, of the importance of money, of the difficulty

of obtaining it, of the prices of things. And so, for six years, every

lesson that she had learned had been a painful one for her.

"D'Aldrigger's four hundred thousand francs were carried to the credit

of the Baroness' account with the firm of Nucingen (she was her

husband's creditor for twelve hundred thousand francs under her

marriage settlement), and when in any difficulty the Shepherdess of

the Alps dipped into her capital as though it were inexhaustible.

"When our pigeon first advanced towards his dove, Nucingen, knowing

the Baroness' character, must have spoken plainly to Malvina on the

financial position. At that time three hundred thousand francs were

left; the income of twenty-four thousand francs was reduced to

eighteen thousand. Wirth had kept up this state of things for three

years! After that confidential interview, Malvina put down the

carriage, sold the horses, and dismissed the coachman, without her

mother's knowledge. The furniture, now ten years old, could not be

renewed, but it all faded together, and for those that like harmony

the effect was not half bad. The Baroness herself, that so well-

preserved flower, began to look like the last solitary frost-touched

rose on a November bush. I myself watched the slow decline of luxury

by half-tones and semi-tones! Frightful, upon my honor! It was my last

trouble of the kind; afterwards I said to myself, 'It is silly to care

so much about other people.' But while I was in civil service, I was

fool enough to take a personal interest in the houses where I dined; I

used to stand up for them; I would say no ill of them myself; Ioh! I

was a child.

"Well, when the ci-devant pearl's daughter put the state of the case

before her, 'Oh my poor children,' cried she, 'who will make my

dresses now? I cannot afford new bonnets; I cannot see visitors here

nor go out.'Now by what token do you know that a man is in love?"

said Bixiou, interrupting himself. "The question is, whether

Beaudenord was genuinely in love with the fair-haired girl."

"He neglects his interests," said Couture.

"He changes his shirt three times a day," opined Blondet; "a man of

more than ordinary ability, can he, and ought he, to fall in love?"

"My friends," resumed Bixiou, with a sentimental air, "there is a kind

of man who, when he feels that he is in peril of falling in love, will

snap his fingers or fling away his cigar (as the case may be) with a

'Pooh! there are other women in the world.' Beware of that man for a

dangerous reptile. Still, the Government may employ that citizen

somewhere in the Foreign Office. Blondet, I call your attention to the

fact that this Godefroid had thrown up diplomacy."

"Well, he was absorbed," said Blondet. "Love gives the fool his one

chance of growing great."

"Blondet, Blondet, how is it that we are so poor?" cried Bixiou.

"And why is Finot so rich?" returned Blondet. "I will tell you how it

is; there, my son, we understand each other. Come, there is Finot

filling up my glass as if I had carried in his firewood. At the end of

dinner one ought to sip one's wine slowly,Well?"

"Thou has said. The absorbed Godefroid became fully acquainted with

the familythe tall Malvina, the frivolous Baroness, and the little

lady of the dance. He became a servant after the most conscientious

and restricted fashion. He was not scared away by the cadaverous

remains of opulence; not he! by degrees he became accustomed to the

threadbare condition of things. It never struck the young man that the

green silk damask and white ornaments in the drawing-room needed

refurnishing. The curtains, the tea-table, the knick-knacks on the

chimney-piece, the rococo chandelier, the Eastern carpet with the pile

worn down to the thread, the pianoforte, the little flowered china

cups, the fringed serviettes so full of holes that they looked like

open work in the Spanish fashion, the green sitting-room with the

Baroness' blue bedroom beyond it,it was all sacred, all dear to him.

It is only your stupid woman with the brilliant beauty that throws

heart, brain, and soul into the shade, who can inspire forgetfulness

like this; a clever woman never abuses her advantages; she must be

small-natured and silly to gain such a hold upon a man. Beaudenord

actually loved the solemn old Wirthhe has told me so himself!

"That old rogue regarded his future master with the awe which a good

Catholic feels for the Eucharist. Honest Wirth was a kind of Gaspard,

a beer-drinking German sheathing his cunning in good-nature, much as a

cardinal in the Middle Ages kept his dagger up his sleeve. Wirth saw a

husband for Isaure, and accordingly proceeded to surround Godefroid

with the mazy circumlocutions of his Alsacien's geniality, that most

adhesive of all known varieties of bird-lime.