e familiar sound of Lousteau's boots, and his well-known ring at
the bell.

She would often try to restrain him by giving him pleasure; she would
hope to be a match for her rivals, and leave them no hold on that
agitated heart. How many times a day would she rehearse the tragedy of
_Le Dernier Jour d'un condamne_, saying to herself, "To-morrow we part."
And how often would a word, a look, a kiss full of apparently artless
feeling, bring her back to the depths of her love!

It was terrible. More than once had she meditated suicide as she paced
the little town garden where a few pale flowers bloomed. In fact, she
had not yet exhausted the vast treasure of devotion and love which a
loving woman bears in her heart.

The romance of _Adolphe_ was her Bible, her study, for above all else
she would not be an Ellenore. She allowed herself no tears, she avoided
all the bitterness so cleverly described by the critic to whom we owe
an analysis of this striking work; whose comments indeed seemed to Dinah
almost superior to the book. And she read again and again this fine
essay by the only real critic who has written in the _Revue des Deux
Mondes_, an article now printed at the beginning of the new edition of
_Adolphe_.

"No," she would say to herself, as she repeated the author's fateful
words, "no, I will not 'give my requests the form of an order,' I will
not 'fly to tears as a means of revenge,' I will not 'condemn the things
I once approved without reservation,' I will not 'dog his footsteps with
a prying eye'; if he plays truant, he shall not on his return 'see a
scornful lip, whose kiss is an unanswerable command.' No, 'my silence
shall not be a reproach nor my first word a quarrel.'--I will not be
like every other woman!" she went on, laying on her table the little
yellow paper volume which had already attracted Lousteau's remark,
"What! are you studying _Adolphe_?"--"If for one day only he should
recognize my merits and say, 'That victim never uttered a cry!'--it will
be all I ask. And besides, the others only have him for an hour; I have
him for life!"

Thinking himself justified by his private tribunal in punishing his
wife, Monsieur de la Baudraye robbed her to achieve his cherished
enterprise of reclaiming three thousand acres of moorland, to which he
had devoted himself ever since 1836, living like a mouse. He manipulated
the property left by Monsieur Silas Piedefer so ingeniously, that he
contrived to reduce the