he was loved came to her aid, the operation
succeeded perfectly. There are stirrings of the inner life which throw
all the calculations of surgery into disorder and baffle the laws of
medical science.

"Claudine wrote a delicious letter to La Palferine, a letter in which
the orthography was doubtful and the punctuation all to seek, to tell
him of the happy result of the operation, and to add that Love was wiser
than all the sciences.

"'Now,' said La Palferine one day, 'what am I to do to get rid of
Claudine?'

"'Why, she is not at all troublesome; she leaves you master of your
actions,' objected we.

"'That is true,' returned La Palferine, 'but I do not choose that
anything shall slip into my life without my consent.'

"From that day he set himself to torment Claudine. It seemed that he
held the bourgeoise, the nobody, in utter horror; nothing would satisfy
him but a woman with a title. Claudine, it was true, had made progress;
she had learned to dress as well as the best-dressed woman of the
Faubourg Saint-Germain; she had freed her bearing of the unhallowed
traces; she walked with a chastened, inimitable grace; but this was not
enough. This praise of her enabled Claudine to swallow down the rest.

"But one day La Palferine said, 'If you wish to be the mistress of one
La Palferine, poor, penniless, and without prospects as he is, you
ought at least to represent him worthily. You should have a carriage and
liveried servants and a title. Give me all the gratifications of vanity
that will never be mine in my own person. The woman whom I honor with
my regard ought never to go on foot; if she is bespattered with mud, I
suffer. That is how I am made. If she is mine, she must be admired
of all Paris. All Paris shall envy me my good fortune. If some little
whipper-snapper seeing a brilliant countess pass in her brilliant
carriage shall say to himself, "Who can call such a divinity his?" and
grow thoughtful--why, it will double my pleasure.'

"La Palferine owned to us that he flung this programme at Claudine's
head simply to rid himself of her. As a result he was stupefied with
astonishment for the first and probably the only time in his life.

"'Dear,' she said, and there was a ring in her voice that betrayed the
great agitation which shook her whole being, 'it is well. All this shall
be done, or I will die.'

"She let fall a few happy tears on his hand as she kissed it.

"'You have told me what I must do to be yo