imes he thought she would take pity on him.

She no longer displayed an insolently happy countenance. Being separated
from Paul, her sadness had an air of gentleness. But the moment he made
a gesture to recover her she turned away fiercely and gloomily, girt
with her fault as if with a golden girdle.

He did not give up, making himself humble, suppliant, lamentable.

One day he went to Lapersonne and said to him with tears in his eyes:

"Will you speak to her?"

Lapersonne excused himself, thinking that his intervention would be
useless, but he gave some advice to his friend.

"Make her think that you don't care about her, that you love another,
and she will come back to you."

Hippolyte, adopting this method, inserted in the newspapers that he was
always to be found in the company of Mademoiselle Guinaud of the Opera.
He came home late or did not come home at all, assumed in Eveline's
presence an appearance of inward joy impossible to restrain, took out of
his pocket, at dinner, a letter on scented paper which he pretended to
read with delight, and his lips seemed as in a dream to kiss invisible
lips. Nothing happened. Eveline did not even notice the change.
Insensible to all around her, she only came out of her lethargy to ask
for some louis from her husband, and if he did not give them she threw
him a look of contempt, ready to upbraid him with the shame which she
poured upon him in the sight of the whole world. Since she had loved
she spent a great deal on dress. She needed money, and she had only her
husband to secure it for her; she was so far faithful to him.

He lost patience, became furious, and threatened her with his revolver.
He said one day before her to Madame Clarence:

"I congratulate you, Madame; you have brought up your daughter to be a
wanton hussy."

"Take me away, Mamma," exclaimed Eveline. "I will get a divorce!"

He loved her more ardently than ever. In his jealous rage, suspecting
her, not without probability, of sending and receiving letters, he swore
that he would intercept them, re-established a censorship over the post,
threw private correspondence into confusion, delayed stock-exchange
quotations, prevented assignations, brought about bankruptcies, thwarted
passions, and caused suicides. The independent press gave utterance to
the complaints of the public and indignantly supported them. To justify
these arbitrary measures, the ministerial journals spoke darkly of plots
and public