cation, dear, to live! to _live_ when other women are praying on
their knees for emotions that never come to them! Remember, darling,
that for this poem of delight there is but a single moment,--youth! In
a few years winter comes, and cold. Ah! if you possessed these living
riches of the heart, and were threatened with the loss of them--"

Madame du Tillet, terrified, had covered her face with her hands during
the passionate utterance of this anthem.

"I did not even think of reproaching you, my beloved," she said at last,
seeing her sister's face bathed in hot tears. "You have cast into my
soul, in one moment, more brands than I have tears to quench. Yes, the
life I live would justify to my heart a love like that you picture. Let
me believe that if we could have seen each other oftener, we should not
now be where we are. If you had seen my sufferings, you must have valued
your own happiness the more, and you might have strengthened me to
resist my tyrant, and so have won a sort of peace. Your misery is an
incident which chance may change, but mine is daily and perpetual. To
my husband I am a peg on which to hang his luxury, the sign-post of his
ambition, a satisfaction to his vanity. He has no real affection for
me, and no confidence. Ferdinand is hard and polished as that piece of
marble," she continued, striking the chimney-piece. "He distrusts me.
Whatever I may want for myself is refused before I ask it; but as for
what flatters his vanity and proclaims his wealth, I have no occasion to
express a wish. He decorates my apartments; he spends enormous sums upon
my entertainments; my servants, my opera-box, all external matters are
maintained with the utmost splendor. His vanity spares no expense; he
would trim his children's swaddling-clothes with lace if he could, but
he would never hear their cries, or guess their needs. Do you understand
me? I am covered with diamonds when I go to court; I wear the richest
jewels in society, but I have not one farthing I can use. Madame du
Tillet, who, they say, is envied, who appears to float in gold, has not
a hundred francs she can call her own. If the father cares little for
his child, he cares less for its mother. Ah! he has cruelly made me
feel that he bought me, and that in marrying me without a 'dot' he was
wronged. I might perhaps have won him to love me, but there's an outside
influence against it,--that of a woman, who is over fifty years of age,
the widow of a notary, w