espondently by his sides, his
head on his chest, the actor soliloquized--a fragmentary soliloquy,
interrupted by sighs and dramatic hiccoughs, overflowing with
imprecations against the pitiless, selfish bourgeois, those monsters to
whom the artist gives his flesh and blood for food and drink.

Then he reviewed his whole theatrical life, his early triumphs, the
golden wreath from the subscribers at Alencon, his marriage to this
"sainted woman," and he pointed to the poor creature who stood by his
side, with tears streaming from her eyes, and trembling lips, nodding her
head dotingly at every word her husband said.

In very truth, a person who never had heard of the illustrious Delobelle
could have told his history in detail after that long monologue. He
recalled his arrival in Paris, his humiliations, his privations. Alas! he
was not the one who had known privation. One had but to look at his full,
rotund face beside the thin, drawn faces of the two women. But the actor
did not look so closely.

"Oh!" he said, continuing to intoxicate himself with declamatory phrases,
"oh! to have struggled so long. For ten years, fifteen years, have I
struggled on, supported by these devoted creatures, fed by them."

"Papa, papa, hush," cried Desiree, clasping her hands.

"Yes, fed by them, I say--and I do not blush for it. For I accept all
this devotion in the name of sacred art. But this is too much. Too much
has been put upon me. I renounce the stage!"

"Oh! my dear, what is that you say?" cried Mamma Delobelle, rushing to
his side.

"No, leave me. I have reached the end of my strength. They have slain the
artist in me. It is all over. I renounce the stage."

If you had seen the two women throw their arms about him then, implore
him to struggle on, prove to him that he had no right to give up, you
could not have restrained your tears. But Delobelle resisted.

He yielded at last, however, and promised to continue the fight a little
while, since it was their wish; but it required many an entreaty and
caress to carry the point.

CHAPTER IX

AT SAVIGNY

It was a great misfortune, that sojourn of the two families at Savigny
for a month.

After an interval of two years Georges and Sidonie found themselves side
by side once more on the old estate, too old not to be always like
itself, where the stones, the ponds, the trees, always the same, seemed
to cast derision upon all that changes and passes away. A renewal of
in