--
And so I soon must die.

Give me your pity! often I blaspheme
The sacred name of God. Does it not seem
That I was born in vain?
Why should I bless him? Or why thank Him, since
He might have made me handsome, rich, a prince--
And I am poor and plain?

ETIENNE LOUSTEAU.
September 1836, Chateau d'Anzy.

"And you have written those verses since yesterday?" cried Clagny in a
suspicious tone.

"Dear me, yes, as I was following the game; it is only too evident! I
would gladly have done something better for madame."

"The verses are exquisite!" cried Dinah, casting up her eyes to heaven.

"They are, alas! the expression of a too genuine feeling," replied
Lousteau, in a tone of deep dejection.

The reader will, of course, have guessed that the journalist had stored
these lines in his memory for ten years at least, for he had written
them at the time of the Restoration in disgust at being unable to get
on. Madame de la Baudraye gazed at him with such pity as the woes of
genius inspire; and Monsieur de Clagny, who caught her expression,
turned in hatred against this sham _Jeune Malade_ (the name of an
Elegy written by Millevoye). He sat down to backgammon with the cure
of Sancerre. The Presiding Judge's son was so extremely obliging as to
place a lamp near the two players in such a way as that the light
fell full on Madame de la Baudraye, who took up her work; she was
embroidering in coarse wool a wicker-plait paper-basket. The three
conspirators sat close at hand.

"For whom are you decorating that pretty basket, madame?" said Lousteau.
"For some charity lottery, perhaps?"

"No," she said, "I think there is too much display in charity done to
the sound of a trumpet."

"You are very indiscreet," said Monsieur Gravier.

"Can there be any indiscretion," said Lousteau, "in inquiring who the
happy mortal may be in whose room that basket is to stand?"

"There is no happy mortal in the case," said Dinah; "it is for Monsieur
de la Baudraye."

The Public Prosecutor looked slily at Madame de la Baudraye and her
work, as if he had said to himself, "I have lost my paper-basket!"

"Why, madame, may we not think him happy in having a lovely wife, happy
in her decorating his paper-baskets so charmingly? The colors are red
and black, like Robin Goodfellow. If ever I marry, I only hope that
twelve years after, my wife's embroidered baskets may still be for me."

"And why should they not be for