give
him up.

But then another child was coming, and this year was a terrible trial.
In spite of the precautions of the two women, Etienne contracted debts;
he worked himself to death to pay them off while Dinah was laid up; and,
knowing him as she did, she thought him heroic. But after this effort,
appalled at having two women, two children, and two maids on his hands,
he was incapable of the struggle to maintain a family by his pen when he
had failed to maintain even himself. So he let things take their chance.
Then the ruthless speculator exaggerated the farce of love-making at
home to secure greater liberty abroad.

Dinah proudly endured the burden of life without support. The one idea,
"He loves me!" gave her superhuman strength. She worked as hard as
the most energetic spirits of our time. At the risk of her beauty
and health, Didine was to Lousteau what Mademoiselle Delachaux was to
Gardane in Diderot's noble and true tale. But while sacrificing herself,
she committed the magnanimous blunder of sacrificing dress. She had her
gowns dyed, and wore nothing but black. She stank of black, as Malaga
said, making fun mercilessly of Lousteau.

By the end of 1839, Etienne, following the example of Louis XV., had,
by dint of gradual capitulations of conscience, come to the point of
establishing a distinction between his own money and the housekeeping
money, just as Louis XV. drew the line between his privy purse and the
public moneys. He deceived Dinah as to his earnings. On discovering
this baseness, Madame de la Baudraye went through fearful tortures of
jealousy. She wanted to live two lives--the life of the world and the
life of a literary woman; she accompanied Lousteau to every first-night
performance, and could detect in him many impulses of wounded vanity,
for her black attire rubbed off, as it were, on him, clouding his brow,
and sometimes leading him to be quite brutal. He was really the woman of
the two; and he had all a woman's exacting perversity; he would reproach
Dinah for the dowdiness of her appearance, even while benefiting by the
sacrifice, which to a mistress is so cruel--exactly like a woman who,
after sending a man through a gutter to save her honor, tells him she
"cannot bear dirt!" when he comes out.

Dinah then found herself obliged to gather up the rather loose reins
of power by which a clever woman drives a man devoid of will. But in
so doing she could not fail to lose much of her moral lustre