ent letter would awaken, you never would have written
it. Certainly no friend, and not even an enemy, on seeing a woman with
a thousand mosquito-bites and a plaster over them, would amuse herself
by tearing it off and counting the stings.

"I will begin by telling you that for a woman of twenty-seven, with a
face still passable, but with a form a little too much like that of
the Emperor Nicholas for the humble part I play, I am happy! Let me
tell you why: Adolphe, rejoicing in the deceptions which have fallen
upon me like a hail-storm, smoothes over the wounds in my self-love by
so much affection, so many attentions, and such charming things, that,
in good truth, women--so far as they are simply women--would be glad
to find in the man they marry defects so advantageous. But all men of
letters (Adolphe, alas! is barely a man of letters), who are beings
not a bit less irritable, nervous, fickle and eccentric than women,
are far from possessing such solid qualities as those of Adolphe, and
I hope they have not all been as unfortunate as he.

"Ah! Claire, we love each other well enough for me to tell you the
simple truth. I have saved my husband, dear, from profound but
skillfully concealed poverty. Far from receiving twenty thousand
francs a year, he has not earned that sum in the entire fifteen years
that he has been at Paris. We occupy a third story in the rue Joubert,
and pay twelve hundred francs for it; we have some eighty-five hundred
francs left, with which I endeavor to keep house honorably.

"I have brought Adolphe luck; for since our marriage, he has obtained
the control of a feuilleton which is worth four hundred francs a month
to him, though it takes but a small portion of his time. He owes this
situation to an investment. We employed the seventy thousand francs
left me by my Aunt Carabas in giving security for a newspaper; on this
we get nine per cent, and we have stock besides. Since this
transaction, which was concluded some ten months ago, our income has
doubled, and we now possess a competence, I can complain of my
marriage in a pecuniary point of view no more than as regards my
affections. My vanity alone has suffered, and my ambition has been
swamped. You will understand the various petty troubles which have
assailed me, by a single specimen.

"Adolphe, you remember, appeared to us on intimate terms with the
famous Baroness Schinner, so renowned for her wit, her influence, her
wealth and her connecti