“And how was Sancerre when you came away?” asked Madame de la Baudraye, to change the subject.
“Monsieur de la Baudraye announced that your expected confinement after so many years made it necessary that it should take place in Paris, and that he had insisted on your going to be attended by the first physicians,” replied Monsieur de Clagny, guessing what it was that Dinah most wanted to know. “And so, in spite of the commotion to which your departure gave rise, you still have your legal status.”
“Why!” she exclaimed, “can Monsieur de la Baudraye still hope—”
“Your husband, madame, did what he always does—made a little calculation.”
The lawyer left the box when the journalist returned, bowing with dignity.
“You are a greater hit than the piece,” said Étienne to Dinah.
This brief triumph brought greater happiness to the poor woman than she had ever known in the whole of her provincial existence; still, as they left the theatre she was very grave.
“What ails you, my Didine?” asked Lousteau.
“I am wondering how a woman succeeds in conquering the world?”
“There are two ways. One is by being Madame de Staël, the other is by having two hundred thousand francs a year.”
“Society,” said she, “asserts its hold on us by appealing to our vanity, our love of appearances.—Pooh! We will be philosophers!”
That evening was the last gleam of the delusive well-being in which Madame de la Baudraye had lived since coming to Paris. Three days later she observed a cloud on Lousteau’s brow as he walked round the little garden-plot smoking a cigar. This woman, who had acquired from her husband the habit and the pleasure of never owing anybody a sou, was informed that the household was penniless, with two quarters’ rent owing, and on the eve, in fact, of an execution.
This reality of Paris life pierced Dinah’s heart like a thorn; she repented of having tempted Étienne into the extravagances of love. It is so difficult to pass from pleasure to work, that happiness has wrecked more poems than sorrows ever helped to flow in sparkling jets. Dinah, happy in seeing Étienne taking his ease, smoking a cigar after breakfast, his face beaming as he basked like a lizard in the sunshine, could not summon up courage enough to make herself the bum-bailiff of a magazine.
It struck her that through the worthy Migeon, Pamela’s father, she might pawn the few jewels she possessed, on which her “uncle,” for she was learning to talk the slang of the town, advanced her nine hundred francs. She kept three hundred for her baby-clothes and the expenses of her illness, and joyfully presented the sum due to Lousteau, who was ploughing, furrow by furrow, or, if you will, line by line, through a novel for a periodical.
“Dearest heart,” said she, “finish your novel without making any sacrifice to necessity; polish the style, work up the subject.—I have played the fine lady too long; I am going to be the housewife and attend to business.”
For the last four months Étienne had been taking Dinah to the Café Riche to dine every day, a corner being always kept for them. The countrywoman was in dismay at being told that five hundred francs were owing for the last fortnight.
“What! we have been drinking wine at six francs a bottle! A sole Normande costs five francs!—and twenty centimes for a roll?” she exclaimed, as she looked through the bill Lousteau showed her.
“Well, it makes very little difference to us whether we are robbed at a restaurant or by a cook,” said Lousteau.
“Henceforth, for the cost of your dinner, you shall live like a prince.”
Having induced the landlord to let her have a kitchen and two servants’ rooms, Madame de la Baudraye wrote a few lines to her mother, begging her to send her some linen and a loan of a thousand francs. She received two trunks full of linen, some plate, and two thousand francs, sent by the hand of an honest and pious cook recommended her by her mother.
Ten days after the evening at the theatre when they had met, Monsieur de Clagny came to call at four o’clock, after coming out of court, and found Madame de la Baudraye making a little cap. The sight of this proud and ambitious woman, whose mind was so accomplished, and who had queened it so well at the Château d’Anzy, now condescending to household cares and sewing for the coming infant, moved the poor lawyer, who had just left the bench. And as he saw the pricks on one of the taper fingers he had so often kissed, he understood that Madame de la Baudraye was not merely playing at this maternal task.
In the course of this first interview the magistrate saw to the depths of Dinah’s soul. This perspicacity in a man so much in love was a superhuman effort. He saw that Didine meant to be the journalist’s guardian spirit and lead him into a nobler road; she had seen that the difficulties of his practical life were due to some moral defects. Between two beings united by love—in one so genuine, and in the other so well feigned—more than one confidence had been exchanged in the course of four months. Notwithstanding the care with which Étienne wrapped up his true self, a word now and then had not failed to enlighten Dinah as to the previous life of a man whose talents were so hampered by poverty, so perverted by bad examples, so thwarted by obstacles beyond his courage to surmount. “He will be a greater man if life is easy to him,” said she to herself. And she strove to make him happy, to give him the sense of a sheltered home by dint of such economy and method as are familiar to
