rate, this was a tangible horror, and could be
grappled with; it was not beyond human reach, a shadowy retribution
from the invisible world. To face the circumstances, however
repulsive, is less depressing than to await in suspense the coming
of their footsteps, and the descent of that blow we know they will
inflict. I had always found that policy best which was bravest. I
remembered this now. Dropping my high tone, and soothing my excited
features, I beckoned the woman and gave her a chair; I took a chair
myself, wrapping a shawl close about me to repress the shivering I
could not yet overcome, and I and that woman, returned from the grave,
as it seemed to me, sat calmly down in business-fashion, and held a
long conversation.

Madame C---- had loved her husband with that sort of respectful,
awe-filled affection which lower natures experience towards those
which are a grade above them. She had loved her children, too,
although they were her torment. Her inability to manage or keep
them in order fretted and irritated her excessively. Monsieur, as a
philosopher, could not understand the anomaly, that a woman who was
perpetually unhappy and ill-tempered, while her children, young,
buoyant, and mischievous, were about her, should sympathize with
and care for them when sick. He could not understand her
conscience-stricken misery when little Jacques drooped after her
severity towards him. Monsieur was a kind husband, however, and a wise
man in many things. He had studied much in his youth, chiefly medical
works, of which he had quite a collection. He could not understand
the whimsical nervousness of women, but, when so slight a thing as a
child's illness appeared to be the cause of it, could unhesitatingly
undertake to remove the difficulty. He had prescribed attentively
for the two children who died before Jacques, thereby rendering them
comfortable and quiet, and saving quite an item in the doctor's bill.

When little Jacques fell ill, and Madame fretted incessantly about
his loss of vigor and vivacity, Monsieur, with fatherly kindness,
undertook, in the midst of his pressing business, to give the child
his medicine, which had to be most carefully prepared. Sometimes the
powders were disguised in _bonbons_, the more agreeably to dose
the patient little fellow; these were prepared with Monsieur's own
fatherly hands, and during his absence were once in a while left
for Madame to administer. Madame had great faith in thes