t; it makes sport of those who cannot keep
the woman they have secured under the canopy of the Church, and before
the Maire's scarf of office. And I had to keep silence.

"'Serizy is happy. His indulgence allows him to see his wife; he can
protect and defend her; and, as he adores her, he knows all the perfect
joys of a benefactor whom nothing can disturb, not even ridicule, for he
pours it himself on his fatherly pleasures. "I remain married only for
my wife's sake," he said to me one day on coming out of court.

"'But I--I have nothing; I have not even to face ridicule, I who live
solely on a love which is starving! I who can never find a word to say
to a woman of the world! I who loathe prostitution! I who am faithful
under a spell!--But for my religious faith, I should have killed myself.
I have defied the gulf of hard work; I have thrown myself into it, and
come out again alive, fevered, burning, bereft of sleep!----'

"I cannot remember all the words of this eloquent man, to whom passion
gave an eloquence indeed so far above that of the pleader that, as I
listened to him, I, like him, felt my cheeks wet with tears. You may
conceive of my feelings when, after a pause, during which we dried them
away, he finished his story with this revelation:--

"'This is the drama of my soul, but it is not the actual living drama
which is at this moment being acted in Paris! The interior drama
interests nobody. I know it; and you will one day admit that it is so,
you, who at this moment shed tears with me; no one can burden his heart
or his skin with another's pain. The measure of our sufferings is in
ourselves.--You even understand my sorrows only by very vague analogy.
Could you see me calming the most violent frenzy of despair by the
contemplation of a miniature in which I can see and kiss her brow, the
smile on her lips, the shape of her face, can breathe the whiteness of
her skin; which enables me almost to feel, to play with the black masses
of her curling hair?--Could you see me when I leap with hope--when I
writhe under the myriad darts of despair--when I tramp through the mire
of Paris to quell my irritation by fatigue? I have fits of collapse
comparable to those of a consumptive patient, moods of wild hilarity,
terrors as of a murderer who meets a sergeant of police. In short, my
life is a continual paroxysm of fears, joy, and dejection.

"'As to the drama--it is this. You imagine that I am occupied with the
Council