e reveres you; and since then he says
to me every day: 'That girl must not remain single. Better marry any
man who has a heart to defend a wife's honour and the nerve to fire a
pistol: every Frenchman has those qualifications!'"

Here Isaura could no longer restrain her emotions; she burst into sobs
so vehement, so convulsive, that Madame Savarin became alarmed; but when
she attempted to embrace and soothe her, Isaura recoiled with a visible
shudder, and gasping out, "Cruel, cruel!" turned to the door, and rushed
to her own room.

A few minutes afterwards a maid entered the salon with a message to
Madame Savarin that Mademoiselle was so unwell that she must beg Madame
to excuse her return to the salon.

Later in the day Mrs. Morley called, but Isaura would not see her.

Meanwhile poor Rameau was stretched on his sick-bed, and in sharp
struggle between life and death. It is difficult to disentangle, one by
one, all the threads in a nature so complex as Rameau's; but if we
may hazard a conjecture, the grief of disappointed love was not the
immediate cause of his illness, and yet it had much to do with it. The
goad of Isaura's refusal had driven him into seeking distraction in
excesses which a stronger frame could not have courted with impunity.
The man was thoroughly Parisian in many things, but especially in
impatience of any trouble. Did love trouble him--love could be drowned
in absinthe; and too much absinthe may be a more immediate cause of
congested lungs than the love which the absinthe had lulled to sleep.

His bedside was not watched by hirelings. When first taken thus ill--too
ill to attend to his editorial duties--information was conveyed to the
publisher of the Sens Commun, and in consequence of that information,
Victor de Mauleon came to see the sick man. By his bed he found Savarin,
who had called, as it were by chance, and seen the doctor, who had said,
"It is grave. He must be well nursed." Savarin whispered to De Mauleon,
"Shall we call in a professional nurse, or a soeur de charite?"

De Mauleon replied, also in a whisper, "Somebody told me that the man
had a mother."

It was true--Savarin had forgotten it. Rameau never mentioned his
parents--he was not proud of them.

They belonged to a lower class of the bourgeoisie, retired shopkeepers,
and a Red Republican is sworn to hate of the bourgeoisie, high or low;
while a beautiful young author pushing his way into the Chaussee d'Antin
does not procl