untess, with an icy look. "Do you not
comprehend that we are, after all, but finite creatures? Our feelings
seem infinite by reason of our anticipation of heaven, but here on earth
they are limited by the strength of our physical being. There are some
feeble, mean natures which may receive an endless number of wounds and
live on; but there are some more highly-tempered souls which snap at
last under repeated blows. You have--"

"Oh! enough!" cried he. "No more copy! Your dissertation is unnecessary,
since you can justify yourself by merely saying--'I have ceased to
love!'"

"What!" she exclaimed in bewilderment. "Is it I who have ceased to
love?"

"Certainly. You have calculated that I gave you more trouble, more
vexation than pleasure, and you desert your partner--"

"I desert!----" cried she, clasping her hands.

"Have not you yourself just said 'Never'?"

"Well, then, yes! _Never_," she repeated vehemently.

This final _Never_, spoken in the fear of falling once more under
Lousteau's influence, was interpreted by him as the death-warrant of his
power, since Dinah remained insensible to his sarcastic scorn.

The journalist could not suppress a tear. He was losing a sincere and
unbounded affection. He had found in Dinah the gentlest La Valliere,
the most delightful Pompadour that any egoist short of a king could hope
for; and, like a boy who has discovered that by dint of tormenting a
cockchafer he has killed it, Lousteau shed a tear.

Madame de la Baudraye rushed out of the private room where they had been
dining, paid the bill, and fled home to the Rue de l'Arcade, scolding
herself and thinking herself a brute.

Dinah, who had made her house a model of comfort, now metamorphosed
herself. This double metamorphosis cost thirty thousand francs more than
her husband had anticipated.

The fatal accident which in 1842 deprived the House of Orleans of the
heir-presumptive having necessitated a meeting of the Chambers in August
of that year, little La Baudraye came to present his titles to the Upper
House sooner than he had expected, and then saw what his wife had
done. He was so much delighted, that he paid the thirty thousand
francs without a word, just as he had formerly paid eight thousand for
decorating La Baudraye.

On his return from the Luxembourg, where he had been presented according
to custom by two of his peers--the Baron de Nucingen and the Marquis
de Montriveau--the new Count met the old Duc