ered a cry.

"I knew it was no longer in my house," she said, "but--here!----"

"My dear child, I asked for it merely to see what pitch of idiocy a man
of genius may attain to. Sooner or later I should have returned it to
you, for I never expected the pleasure of seeing the original here face
to face with the copy. While we finish our conversation I will have it
carried down to your carriage. And if, armed with such a talisman,
you are not your husband's mistress for a hundred years, you are not a
woman, and you deserve your fate."

Augustine kissed the Duchess' hand, and the lady clasped her to her
heart, with all the more tenderness because she would forget her by the
morrow. This scene might perhaps have destroyed for ever the candor and
purity of a less virtuous woman than Augustine, for the astute politics
of the higher social spheres were no more consonant to Augustine than
the narrow reasoning of Joseph Lebas, or Madame Guillaume's vapid
morality. Strange are the results of the false positions into which
we may be brought by the slightest mistake in the conduct of life!
Augustine was like an Alpine cowherd surprised by an avalanche; if he
hesitates, if he listens to the shouts of his comrades, he is almost
certainly lost. In such a crisis the heart steels itself or breaks.

Madame de Sommervieux returned home a prey to such agitation as it is
difficult to describe. Her conversation with the Duchesse de Carigliano
had roused in her mind a crowd of contradictory thoughts. Like the sheep
in the fable, full of courage in the wolf's absence, she preached
to herself, and laid down admirable plans of conduct; she devised a
thousand coquettish stratagems; she even talked to her husband, finding,
away from him, all the springs of true eloquence which never desert a
woman; then, as she pictured to herself Theodore's clear and steadfast
gaze, she began to quake. When she asked whether monsieur were at home
her voice shook. On learning that he would not be in to dinner, she felt
an unaccountable thrill of joy. Like a criminal who has appealed against
sentence of death, a respite, however short, seemed to her a lifetime.
She placed the portrait in her room, and waited for her husband in all
the agonies of hope. That this venture must decide her future life, she
felt too keenly not to shiver at every sound, even the low ticking of
the clock, which seemed to aggravate her terrors by doling them out to
her. She tried to cheat