alousy when he accepted an invitation. And then he was
shamelessly unfaithful. Monsieur de Clagny, really in despair at seeing
Dinah in such disgraceful circumstances when she might have been so
rich, and in so wretched a position at the time when her original
ambitions would have been fulfilled, came to warn her, to tell her--"You
are betrayed," and she only replied, "I know it."

The lawyer was silenced; still he found his tongue to say one thing.

Madame de la Baudraye interrupted him when he had scarcely spoken a
word.

"Do you still love me?" she asked.

"I would lose my soul for you!" he exclaimed, starting to his feet.

The hapless man's eyes flashed like torches, he trembled like a leaf,
his throat was rigid, his hair thrilled to the roots; he believed he was
so blessed as to be accepted as his idol's avenger, and this poor joy
filled him with rapture.

"Why are you so startled?" said she, making him sit down again. "That is
how I love him."

The lawyer understood this argument _ad hominem_. And there were tears
in the eyes of the Judge, who had just condemned a man to death!

Lousteau's satiety, that odious conclusion of such illicit relations,
had betrayed itself in a thousand little things, which are like grains
of sand thrown against the panes of the little magical hut where
those who love dwell and dream. These grains of sand, which grow to
be pebbles, had never been discerned by Dinah till they were as big
as rocks. Madame de la Baudraye had at last thoroughly understood
Lousteau's character.

"He is," she said to her mother, "a poet, defenceless against disaster,
mean out of laziness, not for want of heart, and rather too prone to
pleasure; in short, a great cat, whom it is impossible to hate. What
would become of him without me? I hindered his marriage; he has no
prospects. His talent would perish in privations."

"Oh, my Dinah!" Madame Piedefer had exclaimed, "what a hell you live in!
What is the feeling that gives you strength enough to persist?"

"I will be a mother to him!" she had replied.

There are certain horrible situations in which we come to no decision
till the moment when our friends discern our dishonor. We accept
compromises with ourself so long as we escape a censor who comes to play
prosecutor. Monsieur de Clagny, as clumsy as a tortured man, had been
torturing Dinah.

"To preserve my love I will be all that Madame de Pompadour was to
preserve her power," said she to hers