mamma some years previously, accorded her his protection. This
old gentleman, prudent and provident like all old gentlemen, was a
connoisseur, and knew that to reap one must sow. He resolved first of
all to give his protege just a varnish of education. He procured masters
for her, who in less than three years taught her to write, to play the
piano, and to dance. What he did not procure her, however, was a lover.
She therefore found one for herself, an artist who taught her nothing
very new, but who carried her off to offer her half of what he
possessed, that is to say nothing. At the end of three months, having
had enough of it, she left the nest of her first love, with all she
possessed tied up in a cotton pocket handkerchief.

During the four years which followed, she led a precarious existence,
sometimes with little else to live upon but hope, which never wholly
abandons a young girl who knows she has pretty eyes. By turns she sunk
to the bottom, or rose to the surface of the stream in which she found
herself. Twice had fortune in new gloves come knocking at her door, but
she had not the sense to keep her. With the assistance of a strolling
player, she had just appeared on the stage of a small theatre, and
spoken her lines rather well, when Noel by chance met her, loved her,
and made her his mistress. Her advocate, as she called him, did not
displease her at first. After a few months, though, she could not bear
him. She detested him for his polite and polished manners, his manly
bearing, his distinguished air, his contempt, which he did not care
to hide, for all that is low and vulgar, and, above all, for his
unalterable patience, which nothing could tire. Her great complaint
against him was that he was not at all funny, and also, that he
absolutely declined to conduct her to those places where one can give
a free vent to one's spirits. To amuse herself, she began to squander
money; and her aversion for her lover increased at the same rate as her
ambition and his sacrifices. She rendered him the most miserable of men,
and treated him like a dog; and this not from any natural badness of
disposition, but from principle. She was persuaded that a woman is
beloved in proportion to the trouble she causes and the mischief she
does.

Juliette was not wicked, and she believed she had much to complain of.
The dream of her life was to be loved in a way which she felt, but could
scarcely have explained. She had never been to