d very easily. She was a woman of
forty-five or fifty years, very dark, short, and fat, trying hard to
breathe in the corsets which were specially made for her by the Misses
Mechinet, the clerk's sisters. When she was young, she had been rather
pretty: now she still kept the red cheeks of her younger days, a forest
of jet black hair, and excellent teeth. But she was not happy. Her life
had been spent in wishing for children, and she had none.

She consoled herself, it is true, by constantly referring to all the
most delicate details on the subject, mentioning not to her
intimate friends only, but to any one who would listen, her constant
disappointments, the physicians she had consulted, the pilgrimages she
had undertaken, and the quantities of fish she had eaten, although she
abominated fish. All had been in vain, and as her hopes fled with her
years, she had become resigned, and indulged now in a kind of romantic
sentimentality, which she carefully kept alive by reading novels and
poems without end. She had a tear ready for every unfortunate being, and
some words of comfort for every grief. Her charity was well known. Never
had a poor woman with children appealed to her in vain. In spite of all
that, she was not easily taken in. She managed her household with her
hand as well as with her eye; and no one surpassed her in the extent of
her washings, or the excellence of her dinners.

She was quite ready, therefore, to sigh and to sob when her husband told
her what had happened during the night. When he had ended, she said,--

"That poor Dionysia is capable of dying of it. In your place, I would go
at once to M. de Chandore, and inform him in the most cautious manner of
what has happened."

"I shall take good care not to do so," replied M. Seneschal; "and I tell
you expressly not to go there yourself."

For he was by no means a philosopher; and, if he had been his own
master, he would have taken the first train, and gone off a hundred
miles, so as not to see the grief of the Misses Lavarande and Grandpapa
Chandore. He was exceedingly fond of Dionysia: he had been hard at work
for years to settle and to add to her fortune, as if she had been his
own daughter, and now to witness her grief! He shuddered at the idea.
Besides, he really did not know what to believe, and influenced by M.
Galpin's assurance, misled by public opinion, he had come to ask himself
if Jacques might not, after all, have committed the crimes with