red whether he still regretted the tender, sweet woman whom he had
lost, who died one evening, after years of suffering, like a church lamp
whose oil has been consumed to the last drop. Was he seeking for perfect
oblivion, for that soothing repose in nature, in which a man becomes
enervated, and which envelopes him like a moist, warm cloth? How could he
be satisfied with such an existence? With the bad cooking, and the
careless, untidy ways of a char-woman, and with the shabby clothes, that
were discolored by use!

His numerous relations had been anxious about it at first, and had tried
to cure him of his apparent hypochondria, and to persuade him to employ
himself with something, but as he was obstinate, avoided them, rejected
their friendly offers with arrogance and self-sufficiency, even his
brothers had abandoned him, and almost renounced him. All their affection
had been transferred to the poor child who shared his solitude, and who
endured all that wretchedness with the resignation of a saint. Thanks to
them, she had a few gleams of pleasure in their exile, and was not
dressed like a beggar girl, but received invitations, and appeared here
and there at some ball, concert or tennis party, and the girl was
extremely grateful to them for it all, although she would much have
preferred that nobody should have held out a helping hand to her, but
have left her to her dull life, without any day dreams or homesickness,
so that she might grow used to her lot, and day by day lose all that
remained to her of her pride of race and of her youth.

With her sensitive and proud mind, she felt that she was treated exactly
like others were in society, that people showed her either too much pity
or too much indifference, that they knew all about her side life of
undeserved poverty, and that in the folds of her muslin dress they could
smell the mustiness of her home. If she was animated, or buoyed up with
secret hopes in her heart, if there was a smile on her lips, and her eyes
were bright when she went out at the gate, and the horses carried her off
to town at a rapid trot, she was all the more low-spirited and tearful
when she returned home, and she used to shut herself up in her room and
find fault with her destiny, declared to herself that she would imitate
her father, show relations and friends politely out, with a passive and
resigned gesture, and make herself so unpleasant and embarrassing that
they would grow tired of it in th