e, scolding
herself and thinking herself a brute.

Dinah, who had made her house a model of comfort, now metamorphosed
herself. This double metamorphosis cost thirty thousand francs more than
her husband had anticipated.

The fatal accident which in 1842 deprived the House of Orleans of the
heir-presumptive having necessitated a meeting of the Chambers in August
of that year, little La Baudraye came to present his titles to the Upper
House sooner than he had expected, and then saw what his wife had
done. He was so much delighted, that he paid the thirty thousand
francs without a word, just as he had formerly paid eight thousand for
decorating La Baudraye.

On his return from the Luxembourg, where he had been presented according
to custom by two of his peers--the Baron de Nucingen and the Marquis
de Montriveau--the new Count met the old Duc de Chaulieu, a former
creditor, walking along, umbrella in hand, while he himself sat perched
in a low chaise on which his coat-of-arms was resplendent, with the
motto, _Deo sic patet fides et hominibus_. This contrast filled his
heart with a large draught of the balm on which the middle class has
been getting drunk ever since 1840.

Madame de la Baudraye was shocked to see her husband improved and
looking better than on the day of his marriage. The little dwarf, full
of rapturous delight, at sixty-four triumphed in the life which had so
long been denied him; in the family, which his handsome cousin Milaud of
Nevers had declared he would never have; and in his wife--who had asked
Monsieur and Madame de Clagny to dinner to meet the cure of the parish
and his two sponsors to the Chamber of Peers. He petted the children
with fatuous delight.

The handsome display on the table met with his approval.

"These are the fleeces of the Berry sheep," said he, showing Monsieur de
Nucingen the dish-covers surmounted by his newly-won coronet. "They are
of silver, you see!"

Though consumed by melancholy, which she concealed with the
determination of a really superior woman, Dinah was charming, witty, and
above all, young again in her court mourning.

"You might declare," cried La Baudraye to Monsieur de Nucingen with a
wave of his hand to his wife, "that the Countess was not yet thirty."

"Ah, ha! Matame is a voman of dirty!" replied the baron, who was
prone to time-honored remarks, which he took to be the small change of
conversation.

"In every sense of the words," replied the Co