as fond as
ever of both of them. But there is one thing that makes me sick at
heart. You see, I thought more of Maurice than of anybody else; so
much that I wouldn't have grudged him anything that could give him
pleasure--but now I have lost him, and it hurts me worse than the
loss of her. I have lost both of them, and so my loneliness is
made doubly painful. And then there is still something else which
I have not yet been able to clear up.

MME. CATHERINE. Don't brood so much. Work and divert yourself.
Now, for instance, do you ever go to church?

ADOLPHE. What should I do there?

MME. CATHERINE. Oh, there's so much to look at, and then there is
the music. There is nothing commonplace about it, at least.

ADOLPHE. Perhaps not. But I don't belong to that fold, I guess,
for it never stirs me to any devotion. And then, Madame Catherine,
faith is a gift, they tell me, and I haven't got it yet.

MME. CATHERINE. Well, wait till you get it--But what is this I
heard a while ago? Is it true that you have sold a picture in
London for a high price, and that you have got a medal?

ADOLPHE. Yes, it's true.

MME. CATHERINE. Merciful heavens!--and not a word do you say about
it?

ADOLPHE. I am afraid of fortune, and besides it seems almost
worthless to me at this moment. I am afraid of it as of a spectre:
it brings disaster to speak of having seen it.

MME. CATHERINE. You're a queer fellow, and that's what you have
always been.

ADOLPHE. Not queer at all, but I have seen so much misfortune come
in the wake of fortune, and I have seen how adversity brings out
true friends, while none but false ones appear in the hour of
success--You asked me if I ever went to church, and I answered
evasively. This morning I stepped into the Church of St. Germain
without really knowing why I did so. It seemed as if I were
looking for somebody in there--somebody to whom I could silently
offer my gratitude. But I found nobody. Then I dropped a gold coin
in the poor-box. It was all I could get out of my church-going,
and that was rather commonplace, I should say.

MME. CATHERINE. It was always something; and then it was fine to
think of the poor after having heard good news.

ADOLPHE. It was neither fine nor anything else: it was something I
did because I couldn't help myself. But something more occurred
while I was in the church. I saw Maurice's girl friend, Jeanne,
and her child. Struck down, crushed by his triumphal chariot, they
seem