of her mind Madame Rabourdin took a weekly reception-day
and went a great deal into society to obtain the consideration her
self-love was accustomed to enjoy. Those who know Parisian life will
readily understand how a woman of her temperament suffered, and was
martyrized at heart by the scantiness of her pecuniary means. No matter
what foolish declarations people make about money, they one and all, if
they live in Paris, must grovel before accounts, do homage to figures,
and kiss the forked hoof of the golden calf. What a problem was hers!
twelve thousand francs a year to defray the costs of a household
consisting of father, mother, two children, a chambermaid and cook,
living on the second floor of a house in the rue Duphot, in an apartment
costing two thousand francs a year. Deduct the dress and the carriage of
Madame before you estimate the gross expenses of the family, for dress
precedes everything; then see what remains for the education of the
children (a girl of eight and a boy of nine, whose maintenance must
cost at least two thousand francs besides) and you will find that Madame
Rabourdin could barely afford to give her husband thirty francs a month.
That is the position of half the husbands in Paris, under penalty of
being thought monsters.

Thus it was that this woman who believed herself destined to shine in
the world was condemned to use her mind and her faculties in a sordid
struggle, fighting hand to hand with an account-book. Already, terrible
sacrifice of pride! she had dismissed her man-servant, not long after
the death of her father. Most women grow weary of this daily struggle;
they complain but they usually end by giving up to fate and taking what
comes to them; Celestine's ambition, far from lessening, only increased
through difficulties, and led her, when she found she could not conquer
them, to sweep them aside. To her mind this complicated tangle of the
affairs of life was a Gordian knot impossible to untie and which
genius ought to cut. Far from accepting the pettiness of middle-class
existence, she was angry at the delay which kept the great things of
life from her grasp,--blaming fate as deceptive. Celestine sincerely
believed herself a superior woman. Perhaps she was right; perhaps she
would have been great under great circumstances; perhaps she was not in
her right place. Let us remember there are as many varieties of woman as
there are of man, all of which society fashions to meet its need