way. He never will give sufficient scope and
application to his moderate talents, and accordingly fails very plumply
in music, playwriting, and painting. Then he takes to stock-exchange
gambling, and of course, after the usual "devil's _arles_" of success,
completely ruins himself, owes double what he has, and is about to blow
out his somewhat unimportant brains. But Constance, in the truest spirit
of melodrama, and having long sought him in vain under the guidance of a
_quarta persona_, of whom more presently, realises almost the whole of
her fortune, except a small pittance, dashes it down before him in the
nick of time, and saves him for the moment.

Perhaps the straitest sect of the Berquinaders would have finished the
story here, made the two marry on Constance's pittance, reconciled
Edmond to honest work, and so on. Paul, however, had a soul both above
and below this. Edmond, with the easy and cheap sham honour of his kind,
will not "subject her to privations," still hopes for something to turn
up, and in society meets with a certain family of the name of
Bringuesingue--a father who is a retired mustard-maker with some money
and no brains, a mother who is a nonentity, and a daughter Clodora,[48]
a not bad-looking and not unamiable girl, unfortunately dowered with the
silliness of her father and the nullity of her mother combined and
intensified. There is some pretty bad stock farce about M. Bringuesingue
and his valet, whom he pays to scratch his nose when his master is
committing solecisms; and about Edmond's adroitness in saving the
situations. The result is that the Bringuesingues throw their not
unwilling daughter at Edmond's head. To do him the only justice he ever
deserves, he does not like to give up Constance; but she, more
melodramatic than ever, contrives to imbue him with the idea that she is
false to him, and he marries Clodora. Again the thing might have been
stopped; but Paul once more goes on, and what, I fear, must be called
his hopeless bad taste (there is no actual bad _blood_ in him), and the
precious stage notion that "Tom the young dog" may do anything and be
forgiven, make him bring about a happy ending in a very shabby fashion.
Edmond is bored by his stupid though quite harmless and affectionate
wife, neglects her, and treats his parents-in-law with more contempt
still. Poor Clodora dies, but persuades her parents to hand over her
fortune to Edmond, and with it he marries Constance. "Hide, bl