e programme played out of a provincial amour, so
satirically described by Lousteau to Madame de la Baudraye--a fact which
neither he nor she remembered. Passion is born a deaf-mute.

This winter in Paris was to Madame de la Baudraye all that the month of
October had been at Sancerre. Etienne, to initiate "his wife" into Paris
life, varied this honeymoon by evenings at the play, where Dinah would
only go to the stage box. At first Madame de la Baudraye preserved some
remnants of her countrified modesty; she was afraid of being seen; she
hid her happiness. She would say:

"Monsieur de Clagny or Monsieur Gravier may have followed me to Paris."
She was afraid on Sancerre even in Paris.

Lousteau, who was excessively vain, educated Dinah, took her to the best
dressmakers, and pointed out to her the most fashionable women, advising
her to take them as models for imitation. And Madame de la Baudraye's
provincial appearance was soon a thing of the past. Lousteau, when his
friends met him, was congratulated on his conquest.

All through that season Etienne wrote little and got very much into
debt, though Dinah, who was proud, bought all her clothes out of her
savings, and fancied she had not been the smallest expense to her
beloved. By the end of three months Dinah was acclimatized; she had
reveled in the music at the Italian opera; she knew the pieces "on" at
all theatres, and the actors and jests of the day; she had become
inured to this life of perpetual excitement, this rapid torrent in which
everything is forgotten. She no longer craned her neck or stood with her
nose in the air, like an image of Amazement, at the constant surprises
that Paris has for a stranger. She had learned to breathe that witty,
vitalizing, teeming atmosphere where clever people feel themselves in
their element, and which they can no longer bear to quit.

One morning, as she read the papers, for Lousteau had them all, two
lines carried her back to Sancerre and the past, two lines that seemed
not unfamiliar--as follows:

"Monsieur le Baron de Clagny, Public Prosecutor to the Criminal Court
at Sancerre, has been appointed Deputy Public Prosecutor to the Supreme
Court in Paris."

"How well that worthy lawyer loves you!" said the journalist, smiling.

"Poor man!" said she. "What did I tell you? He is following me."

Etienne and Dinah were just then at the most dazzling and fervid stage
of a passion when each is perfectly accustomed to the oth