on. She wished for success, and she
achieved it; still, she did not make much way with women, and found it
difficult to get introductions.

In the month of March, Madame Piedefer's friends the priests and
Monsieur de Clagny made a fine stroke by getting Madame de la Baudraye
appointed receiver of subscriptions for the great charitable work
founded by Madame de Carcado. Then she was commissioned to collect from
the Royal Family their donations for the benefit of the sufferers from
the earthquake at Guadeloupe. The Marquise d'Espard, to whom Monsieur
de Canalis read the list of ladies thus appointed, one evening at the
Opera, said, on hearing that of the Countess:

"I have lived a long time in the world, and I can remember nothing finer
than the manoeuvres undertaken for the rehabilitation of Madame de la
Baudraye."

In the early spring, which, by some whim of our planets, smiled on Paris
in the first week of March in 1843, making the Champs-Elysees green and
leafy before Longchamp, Fanny Beaupre's attache had seen Madame de la
Baudraye several times without being seen by her. More than once he
was stung to the heart by one of those promptings of jealousy and envy
familiar to those who are born and bred provincials, when he beheld
his former mistress comfortably ensconced in a handsome carriage, well
dressed, with dreamy eyes, and his two little boys, one at each window.
He accused himself with all the more virulence because he was waging
war with the sharpest poverty of all--poverty unconfessed. Like all
essentially light and frivolous natures, he cherished the singular point
of honor which consists in never derogating in the eyes of one's own
little public, which makes men on the Bourse commit crimes to escape
expulsion from the temple of the goddess Per-cent, and has given some
criminals courage enough to perform acts of virtue.

Lousteau dined and breakfasted and smoked as if he were a rich man. Not
for an inheritance would he have bought any but the dearest cigars, for
himself as well as for the playwright or author with whom he went into
the shop. The journalist took his walks abroad in patent leather boots;
but he was constantly afraid of an execution on goods which, to use the
bailiff's slang, had already received the last sacrament. Fanny Beaupre
had nothing left to pawn, and her salary was pledged to pay her
debts. After exhausting every possible advance of pay from newspapers,
magazines, and publishers,