enne to the Rue de Reuilly like a
condemned wretch going from the Palais de Justice to his execution, but
he goes on a cart, and I was on foot. It was dark--there was a fog; I
went to meet Madame Gobain, who was to come and tell me what my wife had
done. Honorine, on recognizing my writing, had thrown the letter into
the fire without reading it.--"Madame Gobain," she had exclaimed, "I
leave this to-morrow."

"'What a dagger-stroke was this to a man who found inexhaustible
pleasure in the trickery by which he gets the finest Lyons velvet at
twelve francs a yard, a pheasant, a fish, a dish of fruit, for a tenth
of their value, for a woman so ignorant as to believe that she is paying
ample wages with two hundred and fifty francs to Madame Gobain, a cook
fit for a bishop.

"'You have sometimes found me rubbing my hands in the enjoyment of a
sort of happiness. Well, I had just succeeded in some ruse worthy of
the stage. I had just deceived my wife--I had sent her by a purchaser
of wardrobes an Indian shawl, to be offered to her as the property of an
actress who had hardly worn it, but in which I--the solemn lawyer whom
you know--had wrapped myself for a night! In short, my life at this
day may be summed up in the two words which express the extremes of
torment--I love, and I wait! I have in Madame Gobain a faithful spy on
the heart I worship. I go every evening to chat with the old woman, to
hear from her all that Honorine has done during the day, the lightest
word she has spoken, for a single exclamation might betray to me the
secrets of that soul which is wilfully deaf and dumb. Honorine is pious;
she attends the Church services and prays, but she has never been to
confession or taken the Communion; she foresees what a priest would
tell her. She will not listen to the advice, to the injunction, that she
should return to me. This horror of me overwhelms me, dismays me, for I
have never done her the smallest harm. I have always been kind to her.
Granting even that I may have been a little hasty when teaching her,
that my man's irony may have hurt her legitimate girlish pride, is
that a reason for persisting in a determination which only the most
implacable hatred could have inspired? Honorine has never told Madame
Gobain who she is; she keeps absolute silence as to her marriage, so
that the worthy and respectable woman can never speak a word in my
favor, for she is the only person in the house who knows my secret. The
othe