voided
all the bitterness so cleverly described by the critic to whom we owe
an analysis of this striking work; whose comments indeed seemed to Dinah
almost superior to the book. And she read again and again this fine
essay by the only real critic who has written in the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, an article now printed at the beginning of the new edition of
_Adolphe_.

"No," she would say to herself, as she repeated the author's fateful
words, "no, I will not 'give my requests the form of an order,' I will
not 'fly to tears as a means of revenge,' I will not 'condemn the things
I once approved without reservation,' I will not 'dog his footsteps with
a prying eye'; if he plays truant, he shall not on his return 'see a
scornful lip, whose kiss is an unanswerable command.' No, 'my silence
shall not be a reproach nor my first word a quarrel.'--I will not be
like every other woman!" she went on, laying on her table the little
yellow paper volume which had already attracted Lousteau's remark,
"What! are you studying _Adolphe_?"--"If for one day only he should
recognize my merits and say, 'That victim never uttered a cry!'--it will
be all I ask. And besides, the others only have him for an hour; I have
him for life!"

Thinking himself justified by his private tribunal in punishing his
wife, Monsieur de la Baudraye robbed her to achieve his cherished
enterprise of reclaiming three thousand acres of moorland, to which he
had devoted himself ever since 1836, living like a mouse. He manipulated
the property left by Monsieur Silas Piedefer so ingeniously, that he
contrived to reduce the proved value to eight hundred thousand francs,
while pocketing twelve hundred thousand. He did not announce his return;
but while his wife was enduring unspeakable woes, he was building farms,
digging trenches, and ploughing rough ground with a courage that ranked
him among the most remarkable agriculturists of the province.

The four hundred thousand francs he had filched from his wife were spent
in three years on this undertaking, and the estate of Anzy was expected
to return seventy-two thousand francs a year of net profits after the
taxes were paid. The eight hundred thousand he invested at four and a
half per cent in the funds, buying at eighty francs, at the time of the
financial crisis brought about by the Ministry of the First of March,
as it was called. By thus securing to his wife an income of forty-eight
thousand francs he considered him