uctions. I have
said that the expression should be modified to read: the disillusions of
marriage and the pollution of adultery. Very often when one is married,
in the place of happiness without clouds which one promises himself, he
finds but sacrifice and bitterness. The word disillusion can then be
used justifiably, that of pollution, never.

Leon and Emma have a rendezvous at the cathedral. They look around or
they do not, it makes no difference. They go out.

"A lad was playing about the close.

"'Go and get me a cab!'

"The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quartre-Vents; then they
were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.

"'Ah! Leon! Really--I don't know--if I ought,' she whispered. Then with
a more serious air, 'Do you know, it is very improper?'

"'How so?' replied the clerk. 'It is done at Paris.'

"And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her."

We know now, gentlemen, that the fall did not take place in the cab.
Through a scruple which honors him, the editor of the _Revue de Paris_
has suppressed the passage of the fall in the cab. But if the _Revue_
lowered the blinds of the cab, it does allow us to penetrate into the
room where they found a rendezvous.

Emma wished to leave it, because she had given her word that she would
return that evening.

"Moreover, Charles expected her, and in her heart she felt already that
cowardly docility that is for some women at once the chastisement and
atonement of adultery."

Once upon the sidewalk, Leon continued to walk; she followed him as far
as the hotel; he mounted the stairs, opened the door and entered. What
an embrace! Words followed each other quickly after the kisses. They
told the disappointments of the week, their presentiments, their fears
about the letters; but now all was forgotten, and they were face to
face, with their laugh of voluptuousness and terms of endearment.

"The bed was large, of mahogany, in the shape of a boat. The curtains
were in red levantine, that hung from the ceiling and bulged out too
much towards the bell-shaped bed-side; and nothing in the world was so
lovely as her brown head and white skin standing out against this purple
colour, when, with a movement of shame, she crossed her bare arms,
hiding her face in her hands.

"The warm room, with its discreet carpet, its gay ornaments, and its
calm light, seemed made for the intimacies of passion."

We are told what happened in that room