stead of giving that person in the
rue Saint-Georges a fresh occasion for scandal, don't you give her a
husband?"

"Ah! my dear director, now you have rectified the only bad thing I had
in my plan. You are worthy of being an archbishop, and I hope I shall
not die till I have had the opportunity of calling you Your Eminence."

"I see only one difficulty in all this," said the abbe.

"What is that?"

"Suppose Madame de Rochefide chooses to keep your son-in-law after she
goes back to her husband?"

"That's my affair," replied the duchess; "when one doesn't often
intrigue, one does so--"

"Badly, very badly," said the abbe. "Habit is necessary for everything.
Try to employ some of those scamps who live by intrigue, and don't show
your own hand."

"Ah! monsieur l'abbe, if I make use of the means of hell, will Heaven
help me?"

"You are not at confession," repeated the abbe. "Save your child."

The worthy duchess, delighted with her vicar, accompanied him to the
door of the salon.

XXII. THE NORMAL HISTORY OF AN UPPER-CLASS GRISETTE

A storm was gathering, as we see, over Monsieur de Rochefide, who
enjoyed at that moment the greatest amount of happiness that a Parisian
can desire in being to Madame Schontz as much a husband as he had been
to Beatrix. It seemed therefore, as the duke had very sensibly said to
his wife, almost an impossibility to upset so agreeable and satisfactory
an existence. This opinion will oblige us to give certain details on the
life led by Monsieur de Rochefide after his wife had placed him in the
position of a _deserted husband_. The reader will then be enabled to
understand the enormous difference which our laws and our morals put
between the two sexes in the same situation. That which turns to misery
for the woman turns to happiness for the man. This contrast may inspire
more than one young woman with the determination to remain in her own
home, and to struggle there, like Sabine du Guenic, by practising (as
she may select) the most aggressive or the most inoffensive virtues.

Some days after Beatrix had abandoned him, Arthur de Rochefide, now an
only child in consequence of the death of his sister, the first wife
of the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, who left no children, found himself sole
master of the hotel de Rochefide, rue d'Anjou Saint-Honore, and of two
hundred thousand francs a year left to him by his father. This rich
inheritance, added to the fortune which Arthur possessed wh