ere
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 provincial folks. Thus Dinah became
a housekeeper, as she had become a poet, by the soaring of her soul
towards the heights.

"His happiness will be my absolution."

These words, wrung from Madame de la Baudraye by her friend the lawyer,
accounted for the existing state of things. The publicity of his
triumph, flaunted by Etienne on the evening of the first performance,
had very plainly shown the lawyer what Lousteau's purpose was. To
Etienne, Madame de la Baudraye was, to use his own phrase, "a fine
feather in his cap." Far from preferring the joys of a shy and
mysterious passion, of hiding such exquisite happiness from the eyes of
the world, he found a vulgar satisfaction in displaying the first woman
of respectability who had ever honored him with her affection.

The Judge, however, was for some time deceived by the attentions which
any man would lavish on any woman in Madame de la Baudraye's situation,
and Lousteau made them doubly charming by the ingratiating ways
characteristic of men whose manners are naturally attractive. There are,
in fact, men who have something of the monkey in them by nature, and to
whom the assumption of the most engaging forms of sentiment is so easy
that the actor is not detected; and Lousteau's natural gifts had been
fully developed on the stage on which he had hitherto figured.

Between the months of April and July, when Dinah expected her
confinement, she discovered why it was that Lousteau had not triumphed
over poverty; he was idle and had no power of will. The brain, to be
sure, must obey its own laws; it recognizes neither the exigencies of
life nor the voice of honor; a man cannot write a great book because a
woman is dying, or to pay a discreditable debt, or to bring up a family;
at the same time, there is no great talent without a strong will.
These twin forces are requisite for the erection of the vast edifice of
personal glory. A distinguished genius keeps his brain in a productive
condition, just as the knights of old kept their weapons always ready
for battle. They conquer indolence, they deny themselves enervating
pleasures, or indulge only to a fixed limit p