nity, 'was extended over her head. Honorine was
nursed as she would have been in her own home. When, on her recovery,
she asked how and by whom she had been assisted, she was told--"By the
Sisters of Charity in the neighborhood--by the Maternity Society--by the
parish priest, who took an interest in her."

"'This woman, whose pride amounts to a vice, has shown a power of
resistance in misfortune, which on some evenings I call the obstinacy of
a mule. Honorine was bent on earning her living. My wife works! For five
years past I have lodged her in the Rue Saint-Maur, in a charming little
house, where she makes artificial flowers and articles of fashion. She
believes that she sells the product of her elegant fancywork to a shop,
where she is so well paid that she makes twenty francs a day, and in
these six years she had never had a moment's suspicion. She pays for
everything she needs at about the third of its value, so that on six
thousand francs a year she lives as if she had fifteen thousand. She is
devoted to flowers, and pays a hundred crowns to a gardener, who costs
me twelve hundred in wages, and sends me in a bill for two thousand
francs every three months. I have promised the man a market-garden with
a house on it close to the porter's lodge in the Rue Saint-Maur. I
hold this ground in the name of a clerk of the law courts. The smallest
indiscretion would ruin the gardener's prospects. Honorine has her
little house, a garden, and a splendid hothouse, for a rent of
five hundred francs a year. There she lives under the name of her
housekeeper, Madame Gobain, the old woman of impeccable discretion whom
I was so lucky as to find, and whose affection Honorine has won. But her
zeal, like that of the gardener, is kept hot by the promise of reward at
the moment of success. The porter and his wife cost me dreadfully dear
for the same reasons. However, for three years Honorine has been happy,
believing that she owes to her own toil all the luxury of flowers,
dress, and comfort.

"'Oh! I know what you are about to say,' cried the Count, seeing a
question in my eyes and on my lips. 'Yes, yes; I have made the attempt.
My wife was formerly living in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. One day when,
from what Gobain told me, I believed in some chance of a reconciliation,
I wrote by post a letter, in which I tried to propitiate my wife--a
letter written and re-written twenty times! I will not describe my
agonies. I went from the Rue Pay