insist on cutting me
short and substituting your ideas for mine. You know nothing at all
about my scheme."

"Nothing! I know all."

"Then tell it to me!" cried Rabourdin, angry for the first time since
his marriage.

"There! it is half-past six o'clock; finish shaving and dress at once,"
she cried hastily, after the fashion of women when pressed on a point
they are not ready to talk of. "I must go; we'll adjourn the discussion,
for I don't want to be nervous on a reception-day. Good heavens! the
poor soul!" she thought, as she left the room, "it /is/ hard to be in
labor for seven years and bring forth a dead child! And not trust his
wife!"

She went back into the room.

"If you had listened to me you would never had interceded to keep your
chief clerk; he stole that abominable paper, and has, no doubt, kept a
fac-simile of it. Adieu, man of genius!"

Then she noticed the almost tragic expression of her husband's grief;
she felt she had gone too far, and ran to him, seized him just as he
was, all lathered with soap-suds, and kissed him tenderly.

"Dear Xavier, don't be vexed," she said. "To-night, after the people
are gone, we will study your plan; you shall speak at your ease,--I will
listen just as long as you wish me to. Isn't that nice of me? What do I
want better than to be the wife of Mohammed?"

She began to laugh; and Rabourdin laughed too, for the soapsuds were
clinging to Celestine's lips, and her voice had the tones of the purest
and most steadfast affection.

"Go and dress, dear child; and above all, don't say a word of this to
des Lupeaulx. Swear you will not. That is the only punishment that I
impose--"

"/Impose/!" she cried. "Then I won't swear anything."

"Come, come, Celestine, I said in jest a really serious thing."

"To-night," she said, "I mean your general-secretary to know whom I am
really intending to attack; he has given me the means."

"Attack whom?"

"The minister," she answered, drawing himself up. "We are to be invited
to his wife's private parties."

In spite of his Celestine's loving caresses, Rabourdin, as he finished
dressing, could not prevent certain painful thoughts from clouding his
brow.

"Will she ever appreciate me?" he said to himself. "She does not
even understand that she is the sole incentive of my whole work. How
wrong-headed, and yet how excellent a mind!--If I had not married I
might now have been high in office and rich. I could have saved half my
sal