ed to the marriage, basing
their objection on the situation of--my daughter's mother. I have no
feeling of either anger or spite, but I love my children, Monsieur. I
have, therefore, come to ask my wife to return home. I hope that to-day
she will consent to go back to my house--to her own house. As for me, I
will make a show of having forgotten, for--for the sake of my
daughters."

Renoldi felt a wild movement in his heart, and he was inundated with a
delirium of joy like a condemned man who receives a pardon.

He stammered: "Why, yes--certainly, Monsieur--I myself--be assured of
it--no doubt--it is right, it is only quite right."

This time M. Poincot no longer declined to sit down.

Renoldi then rushed up the stairs, and pausing at the door of his
mistress's room, to collect his senses, entered gravely.

"There is somebody below waiting to see you," he said. "'Tis to tell you
something about your daughters."

She rose up. "My daughters? What about them? They are not dead?"

He replied: "No; but a serious situation has arisen, which you alone can
settle."

She did not wait to hear more, but rapidly descended the stairs.

Then, he sank down on a chair, greatly moved, and waited.

He waited a long long time. Then he heard angry voices below stairs, and
made up his mind to go down.

Madame Poincot was standing up exasperated, just on the point of going
away, while her husband had seized hold of her dress, exclaiming: "But
remember that you are destroying our daughters, your daughters, our
children!"

She answered stubbornly:

"I will not go back to you!"

Renoldi understood everything, came over to them in a state of great
agitation, and gasped:

"What, does she refuse to go?"

She turned towards him, and, with a kind of shame-facedness, addressed
him without any familiarity of tone, in the presence of her legitimate
husband, said:

"Do you know what he asks me to do? He wants me to go back, and live
under one roof with him!"

And she tittered with a profound disdain for this man, who was appealing
to her almost on his knees.

Then Renoldi, with the determination of a desperate man playing his last
card, began talking to her in his turn, and pleaded the cause of the
poor girls, the cause of the husband, his own cause. And when he
stopped, trying to find some fresh argument, M. Poincot, at his wits'
end, murmured, in the affectionate style in which he used to speak to
her in days gone by:

"Look