h to
seek a Louis XI. among her own offspring, to accept his despotism and a
dynasty, she will be saved.

What Poland has been politically, almost every Pole is in private life,
especially under the stress of disaster. Thus Wenceslas Steinbock, after
worshiping his wife for three years and knowing that he was a god to
her, was so much nettled at finding himself barely noticed by Madame
Marneffe, that he made it a point of honor to attract her attention.
He compared Valerie with his wife and gave her the palm. Hortense was
beautiful flesh, as Valerie had said to Lisbeth; but Madame Marneffe had
spirit in her very shape, and the savor of vice.

Such devotion as Hortense's is a feeling which a husband takes as his
due; the sense of the immense preciousness of such perfect love soon
wears off, as a debtor, in the course of time, begins to fancy that the
borrowed money is his own. This noble loyalty becomes the daily bread of
the soul, and an infidelity is as tempting as a dainty. The woman who
is scornful, and yet more the woman who is reputed dangerous, excites
curiosity, as spices add flavor to good food. Indeed, the disdain so
cleverly acted by Valerie was a novelty to Wenceslas, after three years
of too easy enjoyment. Hortense was a wife; Valerie a mistress.

Many men desire to have two editions of the same work, though it is in
fact a proof of inferiority when a man cannot make his mistress of his
wife. Variety in this particular is a sign of weakness. Constancy will
always be the real genius of love, the evidence of immense power--the
power that makes the poet! A man ought to find every woman in his wife,
as the squalid poets of the seventeenth century made their Manons figure
as Iris and Chloe.

"Well," said Lisbeth to the Pole, as she beheld him fascinated, "what do
you think of Valerie?"

"She is too charming," replied Wenceslas.

"You would not listen to me," said Betty. "Oh! my little Wenceslas, if
you and I had never parted, you would have been that siren's lover; you
might have married her when she was a widow, and you would have had her
forty thousand francs a year----"

"Really?"

"Certainly," replied Lisbeth. "Now, take care of yourself; I warned you
of the danger; do not singe your wings in the candle!--Come, give me
your arm, dinner is served."

No language could be so thoroughly demoralizing as this; for if you show
a Pole a precipice, he is bound to leap it. As a nation they have the
very sp