ld a man not
worship a beautiful and intellectual creature whose soul can soar to
such manifestations?

By one in the morning Hortense was in a state of such intense anguish,
that she flew to the door as she recognized her husband's ring at the
bell, and clasped him in her arms like a mother.

"At last--here you are!" cried she, finding her voice again. "My
dearest, henceforth where you go I go, for I cannot again endure the
torture of such waiting.--I pictured you stumbling over a curbstone,
with a fractured skull! Killed by thieves!--No, a second time I know I
should go mad.--Have you enjoyed yourself so much?--And without me!
--Bad boy!"

"What can I say, my darling? There was Bixiou, who drew fresh
caricatures for us; Leon de Lora, as witty as ever; Claude Vignon, to
whom I owe the only consolatory article that has come out about the
Montcornet statue. There were--"

"Were there no ladies?" Hortense eagerly inquired.

"Worthy Madame Florent--"

"You said the Rocher de Cancale.--Were you at the Florents'?"

"Yes, at their house; I made a mistake."

"You did not take a coach to come home?"

"No."

"And you have walked from the Rue des Tournelles?"

"Stidmann and Bixiou came back with me along the boulevards as far as
the Madeleine, talking all the way."

"It is dry then on the boulevards and the Place de la Concorde and the
Rue de Bourgogne? You are not muddy at all!" said Hortense, looking at
her husband's patent leather boots.

It had been raining, but between the Rue Vanneau and the Rue
Saint-Dominique Wenceslas had not got his boots soiled.

"Here--here are five thousand francs Chanor has been so generous as to
lend me," said Wenceslas, to cut short this lawyer-like examination.

He had made a division of the ten thousand-franc notes, half for
Hortense and half for himself, for he had five thousand francs' worth
of debts of which Hortense knew nothing. He owed money to his foreman
and his workmen.

"Now your anxieties are relieved," said he, kissing his wife. "I am
going to work to-morrow morning. So I am going to bed this minute to
get up early, by your leave, my pet."

The suspicion that had dawned in Hortense's mind vanished; she was
miles away from the truth. Madame Marneffe! She had never thought of
her. Her fear for her Wenceslas was that he should fall in with street
prostitutes. The names of Bixiou and Leon de Lora, two artists noted
for their wild dissipations, had alarmed her.

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