oman did not even receive letters
to comfort her in her unhappy solitude, and his lawyer sent the money
that she and her children required.

She conjectured, hoped and doubted, suffered and wept for more than a
year; then she suddenly went to the capital and appeared unexpectedly in
his apartments. Painful explanations followed, until at last the Count
told her that he no longer loved her, and could not live with her for
the future, and when she wished to make him do so by legal means, and
entrusted her case to a celebrated lawyer, _the Count denied that she
was his wife_. She produced her marriage certificate, when the most
infamous fraud came to light. A confidential servant of the Count had
acted the part of the priest, and the tailor's beautiful daughter had,
as a matter of fact, merely been the Count's mistress, and her children
were bastards.

The virtuous woman then saw, when it was too late, that it was _she_ who
had formed a mesalliance. Her parents would have nothing to do with her,
and at last it turned out in the bargain that the Count was married long
before he knew her, but that he did not live with his wife.

Then Fanny applied to the police magistrates; she wanted to appeal to
justice, but she was dissuaded from taking criminal proceedings; for
although they would certainly lead to the punishment of her daring
seducer, they would also bring about her own total ruin.

At last, however, her lawyer effected a settlement between them, which
was favorable to Fanny, and which she accepted for the sake of her
children. The Count paid her a considerable sum down, and gave her the
gloomy castle to live in. Thither she returned with a broken heart, and
from that time she lived alone, a sullen misanthrope, a fierce despot.

From time to time, a stranger wandering through the Carpathians, meets a
pale woman of demonic beauty, wearing a magnificent sable skin jacket
and with a gun over her shoulder, in the forest, or in the winter in a
sledge, driving her foaming horses until they nearly drop from fatigue,
while the sleigh bells utter a melancholy sound, and at last die away in
the distance, like the weeping of a solitary, deserted human heart.

BERTHA

My old friend (one has friends occasionally who are much older than
oneself), my old friend Doctor Bonnet, had often invited me to spend
some time with him at Riom, and as I did not know Auvergne, I made up my
mind to go in the summer of 1876.

I got