"

One evening Monsieur de Clagny and his wife were taking his dear
Countess home from the theatre, and she was deeply pensive. They had
been to the first performance of Leon Gozlan's first play, _La Main
Droite et la Main Gauche_ (The Right Hand and the Left).

"What are you thinking about?" asked the lawyer, alarmed at his idol's
dejection.

This deep and persistent melancholy, though disguised by the Countess,
was a perilous malady for which Monsieur de Clagny knew no remedy; for
true love is often clumsy, especially when it is not reciprocated. True
love takes its expression from the character. Now, this good man loved
after the fashion of Alceste, when Madame de la Baudraye wanted to be
loved after the manner of Philinte. The meaner side of love can never
get on with the Misanthrope's loyalty. Thus, Dinah had taken care never
to open her heart to this man. How could she confess to him that she
sometimes regretted the slough she had left?

She felt a void in this fashionable life; she had no one for whom to
dress, or whom to tell of her successes and triumphs. Sometimes the
memory of her wretchedness came to her, mingled with memories of
consuming joys. She would hate Lousteau for not taking any pains to
follow her; she would have liked to get tender or furious letters from
him.

Dinah made no reply, so Monsieur de Clagny repeated the question, taking
the Countess' hand and pressing it between his own with devout respect.

"Will you have the right hand or the left?" said she, smiling.

"The left," said he, "for I suppose you mean the truth or a fib."

"Well, then, I saw him," she said, speaking into the lawyer's ear. "And
as I saw him looking so sad, so out of heart, I said to myself, Has he a
cigar? Has he any money?"

"If you wish for the truth, I can tell it you," said the lawyer. "He is
living as a husband with Fanny Beaupre. You have forced me to tell you
this secret; I should never have told you, for you might have suspected
me perhaps of an ungenerous motive."

Madame de la Baudraye grasped his hand.

"Your husband," said she to her chaperon, "is one of the rarest
souls!--Ah! Why----"

She shrank into her corner, looking out of the window, but she did not
finish her sentence, of which the lawyer could guess the end: "Why had
not Lousteau a little of your husband's generosity of heart?"

This information served, however, to cure Dinah of her melancholy; she
threw herself into the whirl of fashi