only to cut off
the lower portion of that letter with du Croisier's signature, and to
fill in the figures to turn it into a bill, and present it to the
Kellers. There was a dreadful struggle with temptation; tears shed,
but the honor of the family triumphed, subject to one condition.
Victurnien wanted to be sure of his beautiful Diane; he would do
nothing unless she should consent to their flight. So he went to the
Duchess in the Rue Faubourg Saint-Honore, and found her in coquettish
morning dress, which cost as much in thought as in money, a fit dress
in which to begin to play the part of Angel at eleven o'clock in the
morning.

Mme. de Maufrigneuse was somewhat pensive. Cares of a similar kind
were gnawing her mind; but she took them gallantly. Of all the various
feminine organizations classified by physiologists, there is one that
has something indescribably terrible about it. Such women combine
strength of soul and clear insight, with a faculty for prompt
decision, and a recklessness, or rather resolution in a crisis which
would shake a man's nerves. And these powers lie out of sight beneath
an appearance of the most graceful helplessness. Such women only among
womankind afford examples of a phenomenon which Buffon recognized in
men alone, to wit, the union, or rather the disunion, of two different
natures in one human being. Other women are wholly women; wholly
tender, wholly devoted, wholly mothers, completely null and completely
tiresome; nerves and brain and blood are all in harmony; but the
Duchess, and others like her, are capable of rising to the highest
heights of feelings, or of showing the most selfish insensibility. It
is one of the glories of Moliere that he has given us a wonderful
portrait of such a woman, from one point of view only, in that
greatest of his full-length figures--Celimene; Celimene is the typical
aristocratic woman, as Figaro, the second edition of Panurge,
represents the people.

So, the Duchess, being overwhelmed with debt, laid it upon herself to
give no more than a moment's thought to the avalanche of cares, and to
take her resolution once and for all; Napoleon could take up or lay
down the burden of his thoughts in precisely the same way. The Duchess
possessed the faculty of standing aloof from herself; she could look
on as a spectator at the crash when it came, instead of submitting to
be buried beneath. This was certainly great, but repulsive in a woman.
When she awoke in the