irtues the practice of which was the glory of her life and her inward
recompense. The secret thought, the conscience of her motherhood, which
gave to the Marana's life its stamp of untaught poesy, was to Juana an
acknowledged life, an open consolation at all hours. Her mother had
been virtuous as other women are criminal,--in secret; she had stolen a
fancied happiness, she had never really tasted it. But Juana, unhappy
in her virtue as her mother was unhappy in her vice, could enjoy at all
moments the ineffable delights which her mother had so craved and could
not have. To her, as to her mother, maternity comprised all earthly
sentiments. Each, from differing causes, had no other comfort in their
misery. Juana's maternal love may have been the strongest because,
deprived of all other affections, she put the joys she lacked into the
one joy of her children; and there are noble passions that resemble
vice; the more they are satisfied the more they increase. Mothers and
gamblers are alike insatiable.

When Juana saw the generous pardon laid silently on the head of Juan by
Diard's fatherly affection, she was much moved, and from the day when
the husband and wife changed parts she felt for him the true and deep
interest she had hitherto shown to him as a matter of duty only. If that
man had been more consistent in his life; if he had not destroyed
by fitful inconstancy and restlessness the forces of a true though
excitable sensibility, Juana would doubtless have loved him in the end.
Unfortunately, he was a type of those southern natures which are keen in
perceptions they cannot follow out; capable of great things over-night,
and incapable the next morning; often the victim of their own virtues,
and often lucky through their worst passions; admirable men in some
respects, when their good qualities are kept to a steady energy by some
outward bond. For two years after his retreat from active life Diard
was held captive in his home by the softest chains. He lived, almost in
spite of himself, under the influence of his wife, who made herself gay
and amusing to cheer him, who used the resources of feminine genius
to attract and seduce him to a love of virtue, but whose ability and
cleverness did not go so far as to simulate love.

At this time all Paris was talking of the affair of a captain in the
army who in a paroxysm of libertine jealousy had killed a woman. Diard,
on coming home to dinner, told his wife that the officer was