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 Receiver-General 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
Sous-prefet, 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 women--finding
such speculation vain, she ceased to speculate.

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
exclaimed:

"Dinah, you shall be a countess yet!"

There was then a patched-up 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, simply
by pursuing a plan of conduct which he was too feeble to change.

There w