ans made up her mind to resign her lover into
the hands of an unworthy rival. She would often go round of a morning,
with her shopping-basket on her arm, and prowl about outside the curio
shop. Torn betwixt grief and rage, tormented by warring ideas, she
sometimes thought she would empty a saucepanful of vitriol on the head
of the faithless one; at others that she would fling herself at his
feet, and shower tears and kisses on his precious hands. One day, as she
was thus eyeing her Michel--her beloved but guilty Michel--she noticed
through the window the fair and youthful Octavie, who was sitting with
her embroidery at a table upon which, in a vase of crystal, a rose was
swooning to death. Zephyrine, in a transport of fury, brought down her
umbrella on her rival's fair head, and called her a bitch and a trollop.
Octavie fled in terror, and ran for the police, while Zephyrine, beside
herself with grief and love, kept digging away with her old gamp at the
_Gimblette_ of Fragonard, the fuliginous Saint Francis of El Greco, the
virgins, the nymphs, and the apostles, and knocked the gilt off the Fra
Angelico, shrieking all the while:

"All those pictures there, the El Greco, the Beato Angelico, the
Fragonard, the Gerard David, and the Baudouins--Guinardon painted the
whole lot of them himself, the wretch, the scoundrel! That Fra Angelico
there, why I saw him painting it on my ironing-board, and that Gerard
David he executed on an old midwife's sign-board. You and that bitch of
yours, why, I'll do for the pair of you just as I'm doing for these
pictures."

And tugging away at the coat of an aged collector who, trembling all
over, had hidden himself in the darkest corner of the shop, she called
him to witness to the crimes of Guinardon, perjurer and impostor. The
police had simply to tear her out of the ruined shop. As she was being
taken off to the station, followed by a great crowd of people, she
raised her fiery eyes to Heaven, crying in a voice choked with sobs:

"But don't you know Michel? If you knew him, you would understand that
it is impossible to live without him. Michel! He is handsome and good
and charming. He is a very god. He is Love itself. I love him! I love
him! I love him! I have known men high up in the world--Dukes, Ministers
of State, and higher still. Not one of them was worthy to clean the mud
off Michel's boots. My good, kind sirs, give him back to me again."

CHAPTER XXIII

WHEREIN WE A