to
excuse her fault and give an object to her life. But she soon tired of
it. In spite of herself, in the stuffy room where the poet sat wrapped
in flannel, she could not help thinking of her little garden so sweetly
scented, and the kind nurseryman seen from afar in the midst of
his shrubs and flowerbeds, appeared to her as simple, touching and
disinterested, as this other one was exacting and egotistical.

At the end of a month, she loved her husband, really loved him, not with
the affection induced by habit, but with a real and true love. One day
she wrote him a long letter full of passion and repentance. He did
not vouchsafe a reply. Perhaps he thought she was not yet sufficiently
punished. Then she despatched letter after letter, humbled herself,
begged him to allow her to return, saying she would die rather than
continue to live with that man. It was now the lover's turn to be called
"that man." Strange to say, she hid herself from him to write; for
she believed him still in love, and while imploring her husband's
forgiveness, she feared the exaltation of her lover.

"He will never allow me to leave," she said to herself.
Accordingly, when by dint of supplications she obtained forgiveness
and the nurseryman--I have already mentioned that he was a
philosopher,--consented to take her back, the return to her own home
bore all the mysterious and dramatic aspect of flight. She literally
eloped with her husband. It was her last culpable pleasure. One evening
as the poet, tired of their dual existence, and proud of his regrown
moustaches, had gone to an evening party to recite his _Credo of Love_,
she jumped into a cab that was awaiting her at the end of the street and
returned with her old husband to the little garden at Auteuil, for ever
cured of her ambition to be the wife of a poet. It is true that this
fellow was not much of a poet!

[Illustration: p055-066]

THE TRANSTEVERINA.

The play was just over, and while the crowd, with its many varied
impressions, hurried away and poured out under the glare of the
principal portico of the theatre, a few friends, of whom I was one,
awaited the poet at the artists' entrance in order to congratulate him.
His production had not, indeed, been very successful. Too powerful to
suit the timid and trivial imagination of the public of our day, it
was quite beyond the range of the stage, limited as that is by
conventionalities and tolerated traditions. Pedantic criticism