a terrible reason for it. Do you know what
it was converted him?"

Aliette gave a sign that she did not know.

"Well! he returned to Paris after a few days' absence. He [231] ran
straight to the lady he loved; Madame Montbazon, I think: he went up a
little staircase of which he had the key, and the first thing he saw on
the table in the middle of the room was the head of his mistress, of
which the doctors were about to make a post-mortem examination."

"If I were sure," said Aliette, "that my head could have such power, I
would love to die."

She said it in a low voice, but with such an accent of loving sincerity
that her husband had a sensation of a sort of painful disquiet. He
smiled, however, and tapping her cheek softly, "Folly!" he said. "A
head, charming as yours, has no need to be dead that it may work
miracles!"

Certainly M. Feuillet has some weighty charges to bring against the
Parisian society of our day. When Aliette revolts from a world of
gossip, which reduces all minds alike to the same level of vulgar
mediocrity, Bernard, on his side, can perceive there a deterioration of
moral tone which shocks his sense of honour. As a man of honour, he
can hardly trust his wife to the gaieties of a society which welcomes
all the world "to amuse itself in undress."

It happened that at this perplexed period in the youthful household,
one and the same person became the recipient both of the tearful
confidences of Madame de Vaudricourt and those of her husband. It was
the Duchess of Castel-Moret [she is another of M. Feuillet's admirable
minor sketches] an old friend of the Vaudricourt family, and the only
woman with whom Aliette since her arrival in Paris had formed a kind of
intimacy. The Duchess was far from sharing, on points of morality, and
above all of religion, the severe and impassioned orthodoxy of her
young friend. She had lived, it is true, an irreproachable life, but
less in consequence of defined principles than by instinct and natural
taste. She admitted to herself that she was an honest woman as a result
of her birth, and had no further merit in the matter. She was old, very
careful of [232] herself, and a pleasant aroma floated about her, below
her silvery hair. People loved her for her grace--the grace of another
time than ours--for her wit, and her worldly wisdom, which she placed
freely at the disposal of the public. Now and then she made a match:
but her special gift lay rather in