pensation works with no such pleasing
simplicity, and he rolled to the dark bottom of his folly. There he felt
everything go--his wits, his courage, his probity, everything that had
made him what his fatuous marriage had so promptly unmade. He walked up
the Rue Vivienne with his hands in his empty pockets and stood half an
hour staring confusedly up and down the brave boulevard. People brushed
against him and half a dozen carriages almost ran over him, until at
last a policeman, who had been watching him for some time, took him by
the arm and led him gently away. He looked at the man's cocked hat and
sword with tears in his eyes; he hoped for some practical application
of the wrath of heaven, something that would express violently his
dead-weight of self-abhorrence. The sergent de ville, however, only
stationed him in the embrasure of a door, out of harm's way, and walked
off to supervise a financial contest between an old lady and a cabman.
Poor M. Clairin had only been married a year, but he had had time to
measure the great spirit of true children of the anciens preux. When
night had fallen he repaired to the house of a friend and asked for
a night's lodging; and as his friend, who was simply his old head
book-keeper and lived in a small way, was put to some trouble to
accommodate him, "You must pardon me," the poor man said, "but I can't
go home. I'm afraid of my wife!" Toward morning he blew his brains out.
His widow turned the remnants of his property to better account than
could have been expected and wore the very handsomest mourning. It was
for this latter reason perhaps that she was obliged to retrench at other
points and accept a temporary home under her brother's roof.

Fortune had played Madame Clairin a terrible trick, but had found an
adversary and not a victim. Though quite without beauty she had always
had what is called the grand air, and her air from this time forth was
grander than ever. As she trailed about in her sable furbelows, tossing
back her well-dressed head and holding up her vigilant long-handled
eyeglass, she seemed to be sweeping the whole field of society and
asking herself where she should pluck her revenge. Suddenly she espied
it, ready made to her hand, in poor Longmore's wealth and amiability.
American dollars and American complaisance had made her brother's
fortune; why shouldn't they make hers? She overestimated the wealth and
misinterpreted the amiability; for she was sure a man co