able."

"Come, come, my dear count!" said Adrienne, "you are recommencing our old
quarrel. I still find in you the ally of my aunt and the Abbe
d'Aigrigny."

"Yes; as the republicans are the allies of the legitimists--to destroy
each other in their turn. Talking of your abominable aunt, they say that
she holds a sort of council at her house these last few days, a regular
mitred conspiracy. She is certainly in a good way."

"Why not? Formerly, she would have wished to be Goddess of Reason, now,
we shall perhaps see her canonized. She has already performed the first
part of the life of Mary Magdalen."

"You can never speak worse of her than she deserves, my dear child.
Still, though for quite opposite reasons, I agreed with her on the
subject of your wish to reside alone."

"I know it."

"Yes; and because I wished to see you a thousand times freer than you
really are, I advised you--"

"To marry."

"No doubt; you would have had your dear liberty, with its consequences,
only, instead of Mdlle. de Cardoville, we should have called you Madame
Somebody, having found an excellent husband to be responsible for your
independence."

"And who would have been responsible for this ridiculous husband? And who
would bear a mocked and degraded name? I, perhaps?" said Adrienne, with
animation. "No, no, my dear count, good or ill, I will answer for my own
actions; to my name shall attach the reputation, which I alone have
formed. I am as incapable of basely dishonoring a name which is not mine,
as of continually bearing it myself, if it were not held in, esteem. And,
as one can only answer for one's own actions, I prefer to keep my name."

"You are the only person in the world that has such ideas."

"Why?" said Adrienne, laughing. "Because it appears to me horrible, to
see a poor girl lost and buried in some ugly and selfish man, and become,
as they say seriously, the better half of the monster--yes! a fresh and
blooming rose to become part of a frightful thistle!--Come, my dear
count; confess there is something odious in this conjugal
metempsychosis," added Adrienne, with a burst of laughter.

The forced and somewhat feverish gayety of Adrienne contrasted painfully
with her pale and suffering countenance; it was so easy to see that she
strove to stifle with laughter some deep sorrow, that M. de Montbron was
much affected by it; but, dissembling his emotion, he appeared to reflect
a moment, and took up mechanically one of