nsations, for she is unable also to read what my enemies in
Germany say about me, and so she continues to love me."

"How can he have enemies?" said Mathilde, smoothing his hair. "He is
so good to everybody. He has only two thoughts--to hide his illness
from his mother, and to earn enough for my future. And as for having
enemies in Germany, how can that be, when he is so kind to every poor
German that passes through Paris?"

It moved the hearer to tears--this wifely faith. Surely the saint that
lay behind the Mephistopheles in his face must have as real an
existence, if the woman who knew him only as man, undazzled by the
glitter of his fame, unwearied by his long sickness, found him thus
without flaw or stain.

"Delicious creature," said Heine fondly. "Not only thinks me good, but
thinks that goodness keeps off enemies. What ignorance of life she
crams into a dozen words. As for those poor countrymen of mine, they
are just the people that carry back to Germany all the awful tales of
my goings-on. Do you know, there was once a poor devil of a musician
who had set my _Zwei Grenadiere_, and to whom I gave no end of help
and advice, when he wanted to make an opera on the legend of the
Flying Dutchman, which I had treated in one of my books. Now he curses
me and all the Jews together, and his name is Richard Wagner."

Mathilde smiled on vaguely. "You would eat those cutlets," she said
reprovingly.

"Well, I was weary of the chopped grass cook calls spinach. I don't
want seven years of Nebuchadnezzardom."

"Cook is angry when you don't eat her things, _cheri_. I find it
difficult to get on with her, since you praised her dainty style. One
would think she was the mistress and I the servant."

"Ah, Nonotte, you don't understand the artistic temperament." Then a
twitch passed over his face. "You must give me a double dose of
morphia to-night, darling."

"No, no; the doctor forbids."

"One would think he were the employer and I the employee," he grumbled
smilingly. "But I daresay he is right. Already I spend 500 francs a
year on morphia, I must really retrench. So run away, dearest, I have
a good friend here to cheer me up."

She stooped down and kissed him.

"Ah, madame," she said, "it is very good of you to come and cheer him
up. It is as good as a new dress to me, to see a new face coming in,
for the old ones begin to drop off. Not the dresses, the friends," she
added gaily, as she disappeared.

"Isn't she div