Félicie and her mother, who were by this time in the bedroom, crept into a corner on seeing Étienne enter with a woman.
“At last, Étienne, my dearest, I am yours for life!” cried Dinah, throwing her arms round his neck, and clasping him closely, while he took the key from the outside of the door. “Life is a perpetual anguish to me in that house at Anzy. I could bear it no longer; and when the time came for me to proclaim my happiness—well, I had not the courage.—Here I am, your wife with your child! And you have not written to me; you have left me two months without a line.”
“But, Dinah, you place me in the greatest difficulty—”
“Do you love me?”
“How can I do otherwise than love you?—But would you not have been wiser to remain at Sancerre?—I am in the most abject poverty, and I fear to drag you into it—”
“Your misery will be paradise to me. I only ask to live here, never to go out—”
“Good God! that is all very fine in words, but—” Dinah sat down and melted into tears as she heard this speech, roughly spoken.
Lousteau could not resist this distress. He clasped the Baroness in his arms and kissed her.
“Do not cry, Didine!” said he; and, as he uttered the words, he saw in the mirror the figure of Madame Cardot, looking at him from the further end of the rooms. “Come, Didine, go with Pamela and get your trunks unloaded,” said he in her ear. “Go; do not cry; we will be happy!”
He led her to the door, and then came back to divert the storm.
“Monsieur,” said Madame Cardot, “I congratulate myself on having resolved to see for myself the home of the man who was to have been my son-in-law. If my daughter were to die of it, she should never be the wife of such a man as you. You must devote yourself to making your Didine happy, monsieur.”
And the virtuous lady walked out, followed by Félicie, who was crying too, for she had become accustomed to Étienne. The dreadful Madame Cardot got into her hackney-coach again, staring insolently at the hapless Dinah, in whose heart the sting still rankled of “that is all very fine in words”; but who, nevertheless, like every woman in love, believed in the murmured, “Do not cry, Didine!”
Lousteau, who was not lacking in the sort of decision which grows out of the vicissitudes of a storm-tossed life, reflected thus:
“Didine is high-minded; when once she knows of my proposed marriage, she will sacrifice herself for my future prospects, and I know how I can manage to let her know.” Delighted at having hit on a trick of which the success seemed certain, he danced round to a familiar tune:
“Larifla, fla, fla!—And Didine once out of the way,” he went on, talking to himself, “I will treat Maman Cardot to a call and a novelette: I have seduced her Félicie at Saint-Eustache—Félicie, guilty through passion, bears in her bosom the pledge of our affection—and larifla, fla, fla! the father Ergo, the notary, his wife, and his daughter are caught, nabbed—”
And, to her great amazement, Dinah discovered Étienne performing a prohibited dance.
“Your arrival and our happiness have turned my head with joy,” said he, to explain this crazy mood.
“And I had fancied you had ceased to love me!” exclaimed the poor woman, dropping the handbag she was carrying, and weeping with joy as she sank into a chair.
“Make yourself at home, my darling,” said Étienne, laughing in his sleeve; “I must write two lines to excuse myself from a bachelor party, for I mean to devote myself to you. Give your orders; you are at home.”
Étienne wrote to Bixiou:
“My dear Boy—My Baroness has dropped into my arms, and will be fatal to my marriage unless we perform one of the most familiar stratagems of the thousand and one comedies at the Gymnase. I rely on you to come here, like one of Molière’s old men, to scold your nephew Léandre for his folly, while the Tenth Muse lies hidden in my bedroom; you must work on her feelings; strike hard, be brutal, offensive. I, you understand, shall express my blind devotion, and shall seem to be deaf, so that you may have to shout at me.
“Come, if you can, at seven o’clock.
Having sent this letter by a commissionaire to the man who, in all Paris, most delighted in such practical jokes—in the slang of artists, a “charge”—Lousteau made a great show of settling the Muse of Sancerre in his apartment. He busied himself in arranging the luggage she had brought, and informed her as to the persons and ways of the house with such perfect good faith, and a glee which overflowed in kind words and caresses, that Dinah believed herself the best-beloved woman in the world. These rooms, where everything bore the stamp of fashion, pleased her far better than her old château.
Pamela Migeon, the intelligent damsel of fourteen, was questioned by the journalist as to whether she would like to be waiting-maid to the imposing Baroness. Pamela, perfectly enchanted, entered on her duties at once, by going off to order dinner from a restaurant on the boulevard. Dinah was able to judge of the extreme poverty that lay hidden under the purely superficial elegance of this bachelor home when she found none of the necessaries of life. As she took possession of the closets and drawers, she indulged in the fondest dreams; she would alter Étienne’s habits, she would make him home-keeping, she would fill his cup of domestic happiness.
The novelty of the position hid its disastrous side; Dinah regarded reciprocated love as the absolution of her sin; she did not yet look beyond the walls of these rooms. Pamela, whose wits were as sharp as those of a lorette, went straight to Madame Schontz to beg the loan of
