ld on earth. How can
any woman throw you over who is so happy as to be loved by you?"

The look with which the Baron rewarded his wife's fanaticism confirmed
her in her opinion that gentleness and docility were a woman's
strongest weapons.

But in this she was mistaken. The noblest sentiments, carried to an
excess, can produce mischief as great as do the worst vices. Bonaparte
was made Emperor for having fired on the people, at a stone's throw
from the spot where Louis XVI. lost his throne and his head because he
would not allow a certain Monsieur Sauce to be hurt.

On the following morning, Hortense, who had slept with the seal under
her pillow, so as to have it close to her all night, dressed very
early, and sent to beg her father to join her in the garden as soon as
he should be down.

By about half-past nine, the father, acceding to his daughter's
petition, gave her his arm for a walk, and they went along the quays
by the Pont Royal to the Place du Carrousel.

"Let us look into the shop windows, papa," said Hortense, as they went
through the little gate to cross the wide square.

"What--here?" said her father, laughing at her.

"We are supposed to have come to see the pictures, and over there"
--and she pointed to the stalls in front of the houses at a right
angle to the Rue du Doyenne--"look! there are dealers in curiosities
and pictures----"

"Your cousin lives there."

"I know it, but she must not see us."

"And what do you want to do?" said the Baron, who, finding himself
within thirty yards of Madame Marneffe's windows, suddenly remembered
her.

Hortense had dragged her father in front of one of the shops forming
the angle of a block of houses built along the front of the Old
Louvre, and facing the Hotel de Nantes. She went into this shop; her
father stood outside, absorbed in gazing at the windows of the pretty
little lady, who, the evening before, had left her image stamped on
the old beau's heart, as if to alleviate the wound he was so soon to
receive; and he could not help putting his wife's sage advice into
practice.

"I will fall back on a simple little citizen's wife," said he to
himself, recalling Madame Marneffe's adorable graces. "Such a woman as
that will soon make me forget that grasping Josepha."

Now, this was what was happening at the same moment outside and inside
the curiosity shop.

As he fixed his eyes on the windows of his new _belle_, the Baron saw
the husband, who,