an ruling Ariel and Prospero.

As to the poor youth himself, high-minded, meditative, and inclined to
be lazy, the desert that his protectress made in his soul might be seen
in his eyes, as in those of a caged lion. The penal servitude forced on
him by Lisbeth did not fulfil the cravings of his heart. His weariness
became a physical malady, and he was dying without daring to ask,
or knowing where to procure, the price of some little necessary
dissipation. On some days of special energy, when a feeling of utter
ill-luck added to his exasperation, he would look at Lisbeth as a
thirsty traveler on a sandy shore must look at the bitter sea-water.

These harsh fruits of indigence, and this isolation in the midst of
Paris, Lisbeth relished with delight. And besides, she foresaw that
the first passion would rob her of her slave. Sometimes she even blamed
herself because her own tyranny and reproaches had compelled the poetic
youth to become so great an artist of delicate work, and she had thus
given him the means of casting her off.

On the day after, these three lives, so differently but so utterly
wretched--that of a mother in despair, that of the Marneffe household,
and that of the unhappy exile--were all to be influenced by Hortense's
guileless passion, and by the strange outcome of the Baron's luckless
passion for Josepha.

Just as Hulot was going into the opera-house, he was stopped by the
darkened appearance of the building and of the Rue le Peletier, where
there were no gendarmes, no lights, no theatre-servants, no barrier to
regulate the crowd. He looked up at the announcement-board, and beheld a
strip of white paper, on which was printed the solemn notice:

"CLOSED ON ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS."

He rushed off to Josepha's lodgings in the Rue Chauchat; for, like all
the singers, she lived close at hand.

"Whom do you want, sir?" asked the porter, to the Baron's great
astonishment.

"Have you forgotten me?" said Hulot, much puzzled.

"On the contrary, sir, it is because I have the honor to remember you
that I ask you, Where are you going?"

A mortal chill fell upon the Baron.

"What has happened?" he asked.

"If you go up to Mademoiselle Mirah's rooms, Monsieur le Baron, you will
find Mademoiselle Heloise Brisetout there--and Monsieur Bixiou, Monsieur
Leon de Lora, Monsieur Lousteau, Monsieur de Vernisset, Monsieur
Stidmann; and ladies smelling of patchouli--holding a housewarming."

"Then, where--where i