nd the neighbouring forests, and the cadet
became the head of the house. At this time Madame was forty-five, and
was still fit to bear children; but alas! she conceived not. As soon
as she saw the lineage of l'Ile Adam destroyed, she was anxious to
obtain offspring.

Now, as during the seven years which had elapsed she had never once
had the slightest hint of pregnancy, she believed, according to the
statement of a clever physician whom she sent for from Paris, that
this barrenness proceeded from the fact, that both she and her
husband, always more lovers than spouses, allowed pleasure to
interfere with business, and by this means engendering was prevented.
Then she endeavoured to restrain her impetuosity, and to take things
coolly, because the physician had explained to her that in a state of
nature animals never failed to breed, because the females employed
none of those artifices, tricks, and hanky-pankies with which women
accommodate the olives of Poissy, and for this reason they thoroughly
deserved the title of beasts. She promised him no longer to play with
such a serious affair, and to forget all the ingenious devices in
which she had been so fertile. But, alas! although she kept as quiet
as that German woman who lay so still that her husband embraced her to
death, and then went, poor baron, to obtain absolution from the pope,
who delivered his celebrated brief, in which he requested the ladies
of Franconia to be a little more lively, and prevent a repetition of
such a crime. Madame de l'Ile Adam did not conceive, and fell into a
state of great melancholy.

Then she began to notice how thoughtful had become her husband, l'Ile
Adam, whom she watched when he thought she was not looking, and who
wept that he had no fruit of his great love. Soon this pair mingled
their tears, for everything was common to the two in this fine
household, and as they never left the other, the thought of the one
was necessarily the thought of the other. When Madame beheld a poor
person's child she nearly died of grief, and it took her a whole day
to recover. Seeing this great sorrow, l'Ile Adam ordered all children
to be kept out of his wife's sight, and said soothing things to her,
such as that children often turned out badly; to which she replied,
that a child made by those who loved so passionately would be the
finest child in the world. He told her that her sons might perish,
like those of his poor brother; to which she replied, th