s for such horrible women as that that you men have indulgence."

"Well, they need it," said Adam.

"Thaddeus used to show some decency--in living apart from us," she
remarked. "He had better go altogether."

"Oh, my dear angel, that's going too far," said the count, who did not
want the death of the sinner.

Paz, who knew Adam thoroughly, had enjoined him to secrecy, pretending
to excuse his dissipations, and had asked his friend to lend him a few
thousand francs for Malaga.

"He is a very firm fellow," said Adam.

"How so?" asked Clementine.

"Why, for having spent no more than ten thousand francs on her, and
letting her send him that letter before he would ask me for enough to
pay her debts. For a Pole, I call that firm."

"He will ruin you," said Clementine, in the sharp tone of a Parisian
woman, when she shows her feline distrusts.

"Oh, I know him," said Adam; "he will sacrifice Malaga, if I ask him."

"We shall see," remarked the countess.

"If it is best for his own happiness, I sha'n't hesitate to ask him to
leave her. Constantin says that since Paz has been with her he, sober
as he is, has sometimes come home quite excited. If he takes to
intoxication I shall be just as grieved as if he were my own son."

"Don't tell me anything more about it," cried the countess, with a
gesture of disgust.

Two days later the captain perceived in the manner, the tones of voice,
but, above all, in the eyes of the countess, the terrible results of
Adam's confidences. Contempt had opened a gulf between the beloved woman
and himself. He was suddenly plunged into the deepest distress of mind,
for the thought gnawed him, "I have myself made her despise me!" His own
folly stared him in the face. Life then became a burden to him, the very
sun turned gray. And yet, amid all these bitter thoughts, he found again
some moments of pure joy. There were times when he could give himself
up wholly to his admiration for his mistress, who paid not the
slightest attention to him. Hanging about in corners at her parties
and receptions, silent, all heart and eyes, he never lost one of her
attitudes, nor a tone of her voice when she sang. He lived in her life;
he groomed the horse which _she_ rode, he studied the ways and means of
that splendid establishment, to the interests of which he was now more
devoted than ever. These silent pleasures were buried in his heart like
those of a mother, whose heart a child never knows; for is it k