ure!--Ah, dear God! What have I done----?"

Lousteau knelt down by her and kissed her hands with a lavish display of
coaxing and petting.

"You do not understand me," said he. "I blame myself, for I am not
worth such sacrifices, dear angel. I am, in a literary sense, a quite
second-rate man. If the day comes when I can no longer cut a figure at
the bottom of the newspaper, the editors will let me lie, like an old
shoe flung into the rubbish heap. Remember, we tight-rope dancers have
no retiring pension! The State would have too many clever men on its
hands if it started on such a career of beneficence. I am forty-two, and
I am as idle as a marmot. I feel it--I know it"--and he took her by the
hand--"my love can only be fatal to you.

"As you know, at two-and-twenty I lived on Florine; but what is
excusable in a youth, what then seems smart and charming, is a disgrace
to a man of forty. Hitherto we have shared the burden of existence, and
it has not been lovely for this year and half. Out of devotion to me you
wear nothing but black, and that does me no credit."--Dinah gave one
of those magnanimous shrugs which are worth all the words ever
spoken.--"Yes," Etienne went on, "I know you sacrifice everything to my
whims, even your beauty. And I, with a heart worn out in past struggles,
a soul full of dark presentiments as to the future, I cannot repay your
exquisite love with an equal affection. We were very happy--without a
cloud--for a long time.--Well, then, I cannot bear to see so sweet a
poem end badly. Am I wrong?"

Madame de la Baudraye loved Etienne so truly, that this prudence, worthy
of de Clagny, gratified her and stanched her tears.

"He loves me for myself alone!" thought she, looking at him with smiling
eyes.

After four years of intimacy, this woman's love now combined every shade
of affection which our powers of analysis can discern, and which modern
society has created; one of the most remarkable men of our age, whose
death is a recent loss to the world of letters, Beyle (Stendhal), was
the first to delineate them to perfection.

Lousteau could produce in Dinah the acute agitation which may be
compared to magnetism, that upsets every power of the mind and body, and
overcomes every instinct of resistance in a woman. A look from him, or
his hand laid on hers, reduced her to implicit obedience. A kind word or
a smile wreathed the poor woman's soul with flowers; a fond look elated,
a cold look depressed