, change hotels, inhabit the most remote quarters of the
town, the suburbs of Paris, the outlying districts.

[Illustration: p047-058]

In the evening they stealthily sallied forth and took sentimental walks
along the fortifications. Oh the wonderful power of romance! The more
she was alarmed, the more precautions, window blinds and lowered veils,
were necessary, the greater did her poet seem. At night, they opened the
little window of their room and gazing at the stars rising on high above
the signal lights of the neighbouring railway, she made him repeat again
and again his wonderful verses:

Moi, je crois a l'amour comme je crois en Dieu.

And it was delightful!

[Illustration: p048-059]

Unfortunately it did not last. The husband left them too much
undisturbed. The fact is, _that man_ was a philosopher. His wife gone,
he had closed the green door of his oasis and quietly set about trimming
his roses again, happy in the thought that these at least, attached
to the soil by long roots, would not be able to run away from him. Our
reassured lovers returned to Paris and then suddenly the young woman
felt that some change had come over her poet. Their flight, fear of
detection, and constant alarms,--all these things which had fed
her passion existing no longer, she began to understand and see the
situation clearly.

[Illustration: p049-060]

Moreover, at every moment, in the settling of their little household,
in the thousand paltry details of every day life, the man she was living
with showed himself more thoroughly.

The few and scarce generous, heroic or delicate feelings he possessed
were spun out in his verses, and he kept none for his personal use.
He was mean, selfish, above all very niggardly, a fault love seldom
forgives. Then he had cut off his moustaches, and was disfigured by
the loss. How different from that fine gloomy fellow with his carefully
curled locks, as he appeared one evening declaiming his _Credo_, in the
blaze of two chandeliers! Now, in the enforced retreat he was undergoing
on her account, he gave way to all his crotchets, the greatest of which
was fancying himself always ill. Indeed, from constantly playing at
consumption, one ends by believing in it. The poet Amaury was fond of
decoctions, wrapped himself up in plaisters, and covered his chimney
piece with phials and powders. For some time the little woman took up
quite seriously her part of a nursing sister. Her devotion seemed