elicacy is never met with but in those
grand creatures, daughters of the soil, whose instinct it is to take
blows without ever returning them; the blood of the early martyrs
still lives in their veins. Well-born women, their husbands' equals,
feel the impulse to annoy them, to mark the points of their tolerance,
like points at billiards, by some stinging word, partly in the spirit
of diabolical malice, and to secure the upper hand or the right of
turning the tables.

The Baroness had an ardent admirer in her brother-in-law,
Lieutenant-General Hulot, the venerable Colonel of the Grenadiers of
the Imperial Infantry Guard, who was to have a Marshal's baton in his
old age. This veteran, after having served from 1830 to 1834 as
Commandant of the military division, including the departments of
Brittany, the scene of his exploits in 1799 and 1800, had come to
settle in Paris near his brother, for whom he had a fatherly affection.

This old soldier's heart was in sympathy with his sister-in-law; he
admired her as the noblest and saintliest of her sex. He had never
married, because he hoped to find a second Adeline, though he had
vainly sought for her through twenty campaigns in as many lands. To
maintain her place in the esteem of this blameless and spotless old
republican--of whom Napoleon had said, "That brave old Hulot is the
most obstinate republican, but he will never be false to me"--Adeline
would have endured griefs even greater than those that had just come
upon her. But the old soldier, seventy-two years of age, battered by
thirty campaigns, and wounded for the twenty-seventh time at Waterloo,
was Adeline's admirer, and not a "protector." The poor old Count,
among other infirmities, could only hear through a speaking trumpet.

So long as Baron Hulot d'Ervy was a fine man, his flirtations did not
damage his fortune; but when a man is fifty, the Graces claim payment.
At that age love becomes vice; insensate vanities come into play.
Thus, at about that time, Adeline saw that her husband was incredibly
particular about his dress; he dyed his hair and whiskers, and wore a
belt and stays. He was determined to remain handsome at any cost. This
care of his person, a weakness he had once mercilessly mocked at, was
carried out in the minutest details.

At last Adeline perceived that the Pactolus poured out before the
Baron's mistresses had its source in her pocket. In eight years he had
dissipated a considerable amount of mo