eighty trouble to what is, in
this case as in yours, a very petty one."

"A petty trouble!" she exclaimed, "and pray for what do you take the
fatigue of coquetting with a de Lustrac, of whom I have made an enemy!
Ah, women often pay dearly enough for the bouquets they receive and the
attentions they accept. Monsieur de Lustrac said of me to Monsieur de
Bourgarel, 'I would not advise you to pay court to that woman; she is
too dear.'"

WITHOUT AN OCCUPATION.

"PARIS, 183- "You ask me, dear mother, whether I am happy with my
husband. Certainly Monsieur de Fischtaminel was not the ideal of my
dreams. I submitted to your will, as you know. His fortune, that
supreme consideration, spoke, indeed, sufficiently loud. With
these arguments,--a marriage, without stooping, with the Count
de Fischtaminel, his having thirty thousand a year, and a home at
Paris--you were strongly armed against your poor daughter. Besides,
Monsieur de Fischtaminel is good looking for a man of thirty-six years;
he received the cross of the Legion of Honor from Napoleon upon the
field of battle, he is an ex-colonel, and had it not been for the
Restoration, which put him upon half-pay, he would be a general. These
are certainly extenuating circumstances.

"Many women consider that I have made a good match, and I am bound to
confess that there is every appearance of happiness,--for the public,
that is. But you will acknowledge that if you had known of the return
of my Uncle Cyrus and of his intention to leave me his money, you would
have given me the privilege of choosing for myself.

"I have nothing to say against Monsieur de Fischtaminel: he does not
gamble, he is indifferent to women, he doesn't like wine, and he has no
expensive fancies: he possesses, as you said, all the negative qualities
which make husbands passable. Then, what is the matter with him? Well,
mother, he has nothing to do. We are together the whole blessed day!
Would you believe that it is during the night, when we are the most
closely united, that I am the most alone? His sleep is my asylum, my
liberty begins when he slumbers. This state of siege will yet make me
sick: I am never alone. If Monsieur de Fischtaminel were jealous, I
should have a resource. There would then be a struggle, a comedy: but
how could the aconite of jealousy have taken root in his soul? He
has never left me since our marriage. He feels no shame in stretching
himself out upon a sofa and remaining th