his
ears in the literary environment, could laugh about his Baroness with
his friends and even with Madame Schontz. To such readers as regard such
things as utterly mean, it is almost useless to make excuses which they
will not accept.

"What did you do at Sancerre?" asked Bixiou the first time he met
Lousteau.

"I did good service to three worthy provincials--a Receiver-General
of Taxes, a little cousin of his, and a Public Prosecutor, who for ten
years had been dancing round and round one of the hundred 'Tenth Muses'
who adorn the Departments," said he. "But they had no more dared
to touch her than we touch a decorated cream at dessert till some
strong-minded person has made a hole in it."

"Poor boy!" said Bixiou. "I said you had gone to Sancerre to turn
Pegasus out to grass."

"Your joke is as stupid as my Muse is handsome," retorted Lousteau. "Ask
Bianchon, my dear fellow."

"A Muse and a Poet! A homoeopathic cure then!" said Bixiou.

On the tenth day Lousteau received a letter with the Sancerre post-mark.

"Good! very good!" said Lousteau.

"'Beloved friend, idol of my heart and soul----' twenty pages of it! all
at one sitting, and dated midnight! She writes when she finds herself
alone. Poor woman! Ah, ha! And a postscript--

"'I dare not ask you to write to me as I write, every day; still, I
hope to have a few lines from my dear one every week, to relieve my
mind.'--What a pity to burn it all! it is really well written," said
Lousteau to himself, as he threw the ten sheets of paper into the fire
after having read them. "That woman was born to reel off copy!"

Lousteau was not much afraid of Madame Schontz, who really loved him for
himself, but he had supplanted a friend in the heart of a Marquise. This
Marquise, a lady nowise coy, sometimes dropped in unexpectedly at his
rooms in the evening, arriving veiled in a hackney coach; and she, as a
literary woman, allowed herself to hunt through all his drawers.

A week later, Lousteau, who hardly remembered Dinah, was startled by
another budget from Sancerre--eight leaves, sixteen pages! He heard a
woman's step; he thought it announced a search from the Marquise, and
tossed these rapturous and entrancing proofs of affections into the
fire--unread!

"A woman's letter!" exclaimed Madame Schontz, as she came in. "The
paper, the wax, are scented--"

"Here you are, sir," said a porter from the coach office, setting down
two huge hampers in the ante-room. "