the matrimonial
resignation he had just despatched.

"That will do," said Corentin. "But as for your position on the
newspaper, you may perhaps have to keep it for a time. The candidacy
of that fool interferes with the plans of the government, and we must
manage in some way to trip up the heels of the municipal councillor. In
your position as editor-in-chief you may find a chance to do it, and I
think your conscience won't kick at the mission."

"No, indeed!" said la Peyrade, "the thought of the humiliations to which
I have been so long subjected will make it a precious joy to lash that
bourgeois brood."

"Take care!" said Corentin; "you are young, and you must watch against
those revengeful emotions. In our austere profession we love nothing and
we hate nothing. Men are to us mere pawns of wood or ivory, according to
their quality--with which we play our game. We are like the blade
that cuts what is given it to cut, but, careful only to be delicately
sharpened, wishes neither harm nor good to any one. Now let us speak
of your cousin, to whom, I suppose, you have some curiosity to be
presented."

La Peyrade was not obliged to pretend to eagerness, that which he felt
was genuine.

"Lydie de la Peyrade," said Corentin, "is nearly thirty, but her
innocence, joined to a gentle form of insanity, has kept her apart from
all those passions, ideas, and impressions which use up life, and has,
if I may say so, embalmed her in a sort of eternal youth. You would not
think her more than twenty. She is fair and slender; her face, which
is very delicate, is especially remarkable for an expression of angelic
sweetness. Deprived of her full reason by a terrible catastrophe, her
monomania has something touching about it. She always carries in her
arms or keeps beside her a bundle of linen which she nurses and cares
for as though it were a sick child; and, excepting Bruneau and myself,
whom she recognizes, she thinks all other men are doctors, whom she
consults about the child, and to whom she listens as oracles. A crisis
which lately happened in her malady has convinced Horace Bianchon, that
prince of science, that if the reality could be substituted for this
long delusion of motherhood, her reason would assert itself. It is
surely a worthy task to bring back light to a soul in which it is
scarcely veiled; and the existing bond of relationship has seemed to
me to point you out as specially designated to effect this cure,
the succ