ain sacrificed
herself absolutely to secure his comfort; she had resumed her black
raiment, but now it was in sign of mourning, for her pleasure was
turning to remorse. She was too often put to shame not to feel the
weight of the chain, and her mother found her sunk in those moods of
meditation into which visions of the future cast unhappy souls in a sort
of torpor.

Madame Piedefer, by the advice of her spiritual director, was on the
watch for the moment of exhaustion, which the priest told her would
inevitably supervene, and then she pleaded in behalf of the children.
She restricted herself to urging that Dinah and Lousteau should live
apart, not asking her to give him up. In real life these violent
situations are not closed as they are in books, by death or cleverly
contrived catastrophes; they end far less poetically--in disgust, in the
blighting of every flower of the soul, in the commonplace of habit, and
very often too in another passion, which robs a wife of the interest
which is traditionally ascribed to women. So, when common sense, the law
of social proprieties, family interest--all the mixed elements which,
since the Restoration, have been dignified by the mane of Public Morals,
out of sheer aversion to the name of the Catholic religion--where this
is seconded by a sense of insults a little too offensive; when the
fatigue of constant self-sacrifice has almost reached the point of
exhaustion; and when, under these circumstances, a too cruel blow--one
of those mean acts which a man never lets a woman know of unless he
believes himself to be her assured master--puts the crowning touch
to her revulsion and disenchantment, the moment has come for the
intervention of the friend who undertakes the cure. Madame Piedefer had
no great difficulty now in removing the film from her daughter's eyes.

She sent for Monsieur de Clagny, who completed the work by assuring
Madame de la Baudraye that if she would give up Etienne, her husband
would allow her to keep the children and to live in Paris, and would
restore her to the command of her own fortune.

"And what a life you are leading!" said he. "With care and judgment, and
the support of some pious and charitable persons, you may have a salon
and conquer a position. Paris is not Sancerre."

Dinah left it to Monsieur de Clagny to negotiate a reconciliation with
the old man.

Monsieur de la Baudraye had sold his wine well, he had sold his wool,
he had felled his timber,