, he helped Madame de la
Baudraye by gently taking her arm, and he and Gatien took the front
seat, leaving the saddle horse at La Baudraye.

"You have changed your gown," said Gatien, blunderingly, to Dinah.

"Madame la Baronne was chilled by the cool air off the river," replied
Lousteau. "Bianchon advised her to put on a warm dress."

Dinah turned as red as a poppy, and Madame Piedefer assumed a stern
expression.

"Poor Bianchon! he is on the road to Paris. A noble soul!" said
Lousteau.

"Oh, yes!" cried Madame de la Baudraye, "he is high-minded, 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 bitterly--why? 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 woman has been made to laugh, she is
finally committed.

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 anything--not 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 man who seems rapt in his own happiness.

After coffee had been serv