elieve, make us pay for love
with the most cruel grief. I must pay for ten years of happiness and
twenty-four years of despair, of ceaseless sorrow, of bitterness--"

"But you had ten years, dear mamma, and I have had but three!" said the
self-absorbed girl.

"Nothing is lost yet," said Adeline. "Only wait till Wenceslas comes."

"Mother," said she, "he lied, he deceived me. He said, 'I will not go,'
and he went. And that over his child's cradle."

"For pleasure, my child, men will commit the most cowardly, the most
infamous actions--even crimes; it lies in their nature, it would seem.
We wives are set apart for sacrifice. I believed my troubles were ended,
and they are beginning again, for I never thought to suffer doubly by
suffering with my child. Courage--and silence!--My Hortense, swear that
you will never discuss your griefs with anybody but me, never let them
be suspected by any third person. Oh! be as proud as your mother has
been."

Hortense started; she had heard her husband's step.

"So it would seem," said Wenceslas, as he came in, "that Stidmann has
been here while I went to see him."

"Indeed!" said Hortense, with the angry irony of an offended woman who
uses words to stab.

"Certainly," said Wenceslas, affecting surprise. "We have just met."

"And yesterday?"

"Well, yesterday I deceived you, my darling love; and your mother shall
judge between us."

This candor unlocked his wife's heart. All really lofty women like the
truth better than lies. They cannot bear to see their idol smirched;
they want to be proud of the despotism they bow to.

There is a strain of this feeling in the devotion of the Russians to
their Czar.

"Now, listen, dear mother," Wenceslas went on. "I so truly love my sweet
and kind Hortense, that I concealed from her the extent of our poverty.
What could I do? She was still nursing the boy, and such troubles would
have done her harm; you know what the risk is for a woman. Her beauty,
youth, and health are imperiled. Did I do wrong?--She believes that we
owe five thousand francs; but I owe five thousand more. The day before
yesterday we were in the depths! No one on earth will lend to us
artists. Our talents are not less untrustworthy than our whims. I
knocked in vain at every door. Lisbeth, indeed, offered us her savings."

"Poor soul!" said Hortense.

"Poor soul!" said the Baroness.

"But what are Lisbeth's two thousand francs? Everything to her, nothing
to us.--Th