home after the winter. It seemed to me strange
that there should be so many men and women in the world with nothing to
do, merely loafing round it like tramps--the richest being the idlest,
and the idlest the most immoral.

My husband knew many Frenchmen of the upper classes, and I think he
spent several hours every day at their clubs, but (perhaps at Alma's
instigation) he made us wallow through the filth of Paris by night.

"It will be lots of fun," said Alma. "And then who is to know us in
places like those?"

I tolerated this for a little while, and then refused to be dragged
around any longer as a cloak for Alma's pleasures. Telling myself that
if I continued to share my husband's habits of life, for any reason or
under any pretext, I should become like him, and my soul would rot inch
by inch, I resolved to be clean in my own eyes and to resist the
contaminations of his company.

As a consequence, he became more and more reckless, and Alma made no
efforts to restrain him, so that it came to pass at last that they went
together to a scandalous entertainment which was for a while the talk of
the society papers throughout Europe.

I know no more of this entertainment than I afterwards learned from
those sources--that it was given by a notorious woman, who was not shut
out of society because she was "the good friend" of a King; that she did
the honours with clever imitative elegance; that her salon that night
was crowded with such male guests as one might see at the court of a
queen--princes, dukes, marquises, counts, English noblemen and members
of parliament, as well as some reputable women of my own and other
countries; that the tables were laid for supper at four o'clock with
every delicacy of the season and wines of the rarest vintage; that after
supper dancing was resumed with increased animation; and that the
dazzling and improper spectacle terminated with a _Chaine diabolique_ at
seven in the morning, when the sun was streaming through the windows and
the bells of the surrounding churches were ringing for early mass.

I had myself risen early that morning to go to communion at the
Madeleine, and never shall I forget the effect of cleansing produced
upon me by the sacred sacrament. From the moment when--the priest
standing at the foot of the altar--the choir sang the _Kyrie eleison_,
down to the solemn silence of the elevation, I had a sense of being
washed from all the taint of the contaminating days sinc