e to regret," said he, as he quitted Sancerre, "that
I did not succeed in pleasing Madame de la Baudraye; that would have
made my triumph complete!"

The household that was thus racked by domestic troubles was calm on
the surface; here were two ill-assorted but resigned beings, and the
indescribable propriety, the lie that society insists on, and which to
Dinah was an unendurable yoke. Why did she long to throw off the mask
she had worn for twelve years? Whence this weariness which, every day,
increased her hope of finding herself a widow?

The reader who has noted all the phases of her existence will have
understood the various illusions by which Dinah, like many another
woman, had been deceived. After an attempt to master Monsieur de la
Baudraye, she had indulged the hope of becoming a mother. Between those
miserable disputes over household matters and the melancholy conviction
as to her fate, quite a long time had elapsed. Then, when she had looked
for consolation, the consoler, Monsieur de Chargeboeuf had left her.
Thus, the overwhelming temptation which commonly causes women to sin had
hitherto been absent. For if there are, after all, some women who make
straight for unfaithfulness, are there not many more who cling to hope,
and do not fall till they have wandered long in a labyrinth of secret
woes?

Such was Dinah. She had so little impulse to fail in her duty, that she
did not care enough for Monsieur de Clagny to forgive him his defeat.

Then the move to the Chateau d'Anzy, the rearrangement of her collected
treasures and curiosities, which derived added value from the splendid
setting which Philibert de Lorme seemed to have planned on purpose for
this museum, occupied her for several months, giving her leisure to
meditate one of those decisive steps that startle the public, ignorant
of the motives which, however, it sometimes discovers by dint of gossip
and suppositions.

Madame de la Baudraye had been greatly struck by the reputation of
Lousteau, who was regarded as a lady's man of the first water in
consequence of his intimacies among actresses; she was anxious to know
him; she read his books, and was fired with enthusiasm, less perhaps for
his talents than for his successes with women; and to attract him to the
country, she started the notion that it was obligatory on Sancerre to
return one of its great men at the elections. She made Gatien Boirouge
write to the great physician Bianchon, whom he claime