of State, the Chamber, the Courts, Politics.--Why, dear me,
seven hours at night are enough for all that, so much are my faculties
overwrought by the life I lead! Honorine is my real concern. To
recover my wife is my only study; to guard her in her cage, without her
suspecting that she is in my power; to satisfy her needs, to supply the
little pleasure she allows herself, to be always about her like a sylph
without allowing her to see or to suspect me, for if she did, the future
would be lost,--that is my life, my true life.--For seven years I
have never gone to bed without going first to see the light of her
night-lamp, or her shadow on the window curtains.

"'She left my house, choosing to take nothing but the dress she wore
that day. The child carried her magnanimity to the point of folly!
Consequently, eighteen months after her flight she was deserted by her
lover, who was appalled by the cold, cruel, sinister, and revolting
aspect of poverty--the coward! The man had, no doubt, counted on the
easy and luxurious life in Switzerland or Italy which fine ladies
indulge in when they leave their husbands. Honorine has sixty thousand
francs a year of her own. The wretch left the dear creature expecting an
infant, and without a penny. In the month of November 1820 I found means
to persuade the best _accoucheur_ in Paris to play the part of a humble
suburban apothecary. I induced the priest of the parish in which the
Countess was living to supply her needs as though he were performing an
act of charity. Then to hide my wife, to secure her against discovery,
to find her a housekeeper who would be devoted to me and be my
intelligent confidante--it was a task worthy of Figaro! You may suppose
that to discover where my wife had taken refuge I had only to make up my
mind to it.

"'After three months of desperation rather than despair, the idea of
devoting myself to Honorine with God only in my secret, was one of those
poems which occur only to the heart of a lover through life and death!
Love must have its daily food. And ought I not to protect this child,
whose guilt was the outcome of my imprudence, against fresh disaster--to
fulfil my part, in short, as a guardian angel?--At the age of seven
months her infant died, happily for her and for me. For nine months more
my wife lay between life and death, deserted at the time when she most
needed a manly arm; but this arm,' said he, holding out his own with a
gesture of angelic dig