self to wear
a smile at home like that of a debtor in the presence of his creditor.
This compulsion was every day more intolerable.

Hitherto the immense advantages he foresaw in the future had given him
strength; but when he saw Monsieur de la Baudraye embark for the United
States, as briskly as if it were to go down to Rouen in a steamboat, he
ceased to believe in the future.

He went in from the garden to the pretty drawing-room, where Dinah had
just taken leave of her husband.

"Etienne," said Madame de la Baudraye, "do you know what my lord and
master has proposed to me? In the event of my wishing to return to live
at Anzy during his absence, he has left his orders, and he hopes that my
mother's good advice will weigh with me, and that I shall go back there
with my children."

"It is very good advice," replied Lousteau drily, knowing the passionate
disclaimer that Dinah expected, and indeed begged for with her eyes.

The tone, the words, the cold look, all hit the hapless woman so hard,
who lived only in her love, that two large tears trickled slowly down
her cheeks, while she did not speak a word, and Lousteau only saw them
when she took out her handkerchief to wipe away these two beads of
anguish.

"What is it, Didine?" he asked, touched to the heart by this excessive
sensibility.

"Just as I was priding myself on having won our freedom," said she--"at
the cost of my fortune--by selling--what is most precious to a mother's
heart--selling my children!--for he is to have them from the age of
six--and I cannot see them without going to Sancerre!--and that is
torture!--Ah, dear God! What have I done----?"

Lousteau knelt down by her and kissed her hands with a lavish display of
coaxing and petting.

"You do not understand me," said he. "I blame myself, for I am not
worth such sacrifices, dear angel. I am, in a literary sense, a quite
second-rate man. If the day comes when I can no longer cut a figure at
the bottom of the newspaper, the editors will let me lie, like an old
shoe flung into the rubbish heap. Remember, we tight-rope dancers have
no retiring pension! The State would have too many clever men on its
hands if it started on such a career of beneficence. I am forty-two, and
I am as idle as a marmot. I feel it--I know it"--and he took her by the
hand--"my love can only be fatal to you.

"As you know, at two-and-twenty I lived on Florine; but what is
excusable in a youth, what then seems smart and c