tle clerk who
loved her so much and who married her; and of the excursions they used to
take together to Saint-Germain, going third-class, and eating their
dinner upon the green grass under the trees, and then enjoying the funny
doings of the painted clowns, the illuminations, the music, and the
dancing. Oh! they danced and danced and danced, until she was so tired
that she slept all the way home with her head on his shoulder, dreaming
of the happy day they had had.

"That was the best time of my life, Monsieur. We were no richer than we
are now; but we were more free. He was with me more, too: now, he
certainly makes me very proud with his beautiful articles; but I don't
see him; I don't see him any more, and it makes me very sad. Oh! if it
were not for that, although we are not millionaires, I should be very
happy; yes, entirely, entirely happy."

There was, in the simple, gentle resignation of this poor girl,
sacrificed without knowing it, such devoted love for the man who, in
reality, abandoned her, that Prince Andras felt deeply moved and touched.
He thought of the one leading a life of pleasure, and the other a life of
fatigue; of this household touching on one side poverty, and, on the
other, wealth and fashion; and he divined, from the innocent words of
this young wife, the hardships of this home, half deserted by the
husband, and the nervousness and peevishness of Jacquemin returning to
this poor place after a night at the restaurants or a ball at Baroness
Dinati's. He heard the cutting voice of the elegant little man whom his
humble wife contemplated with the eyes of a Hindoo adoring an idol; he
was present, in imagination, at those tragically sorrowful scenes which
the wife bore with her tender smile, poor woman, knowing of the life of
her Paul only those duties of luxury which she herself imagined,
remaining a seamstress still to sew the buttons on the shirts and gloves
of her husband, and absolutely ignorant of all the entertainments where,
in an evening, would sometimes be lost, at a game of cards, the whole
monthly salary of Monsieur Puck! And Zilah said to himself, that this
was, perhaps, the first time that this woman had ever been brought in
contact with anything pertaining to her husband's fashionable life--and
in what shape?--that of a man who had come to demand satisfaction for an
injury, and to say to Jacquemin: "I shall probably kill you, Monsieur!"

And gradually, before the spectacle of this p