Rue Basse,
where families lived with children that disturbed his meditations. He
would have liked to free Les Jardies from its mortgage and keep the
place as a summer resort, while renting a snug mansion in the city
during the winter; but the two abodes were hardly within his means,
unless Eve would loosen her purse-strings. "I will not sell it," he
informed her, referring to his "Folly"; "it was built with my blood
and brains. I will stick to it--if I cannot dispose of it
advantageously," he finished up with, inconsequently. And still she
made no sign; or, rather she proffered no cash. Business advice she
gave in plenty. About each of the Paris houses suggested she had some
objections to make, so that, after fixing successively on a residence
belonging to Madame Delannoy (one of his creditor friends) in the Rue
Neuve-des Mathurins, on the old mansion opposite his Passy abode once
possessed by the Princesse de Lamballe, on the property in the Rue
Ponthieu, and on a plot of land in the Allee des Veuves where he
thought they could build, the end of the year arrived without any
definite solution being reached. The two "louloups," as he called
himself and Eve, filled their correspondence with calculations and
figures, the Paris "louloup" expressing his conviction that figures
were the foundation of their happiness.

If he did not die too soon, she might consider she would marry a
million in giving him her hand, he said. Slily, he now and again
quoted his worth in the estimation of a rival feminine authority. For
example, Madame de Girardin was about to write an article on the great
conversationalists of the day, and had mentioned that she held him to
be one of the most charming. However, when he raised his rate of
exchange in this way, he was always prudent enough to follow up with
concessions. His intimacy with the Englishwoman, Madame Visconti, who
was Eve's bugbear, he broke off completely--at least he swore he had
done so and offered to send his beloved tyrant the cold letter in
which his whilom friend and benefactress bade him good-bye. To let Eve
see it would not be gallant on his part, he confessed; but what could
he deny her, if she persisted. He was her Paris agent, even her Paris
errand-boy, at one time negotiating the entrance of the governess,
Mademoiselle Borel, into the Saint-Thomas-de-Velleneuve nunnery; at
another, purchasing gloves, millinery, and other articles of dress.
Yet she never considered him subm