the affair, considering that it
would injure the cause of Democracy. Arnoux had always been lax in his
conduct and disorderly in his life.

"A regular hare-brained fellow! He burned the candle at both ends! The
petticoat has ruined him! 'Tis not himself that I pity, but his poor
wife!" For the Citizen admired virtuous women, and had a great esteem
for Madame Arnoux.

"She must have suffered a nice lot!"

Frederick felt grateful to him for his sympathy; and, as if Regimbart
had done him a service, pressed his hand effusively.

"Have you done all that's necessary in the matter?" was Rosanette's
greeting to him when she saw him again.

He had not been able to pluck up courage to do it, he answered, and
walked about the streets at random to divert his thoughts.

At eight o'clock, they passed into the dining-room; but they remained
seated face to face in silence, gave vent each to a deep sigh every now
and then, and pushed away their plates.

Frederick drank some brandy. He felt quite shattered, crushed,
annihilated, no longer conscious of anything save a sensation of extreme
fatigue.

She went to look at the portrait. The red, the yellow, the green, and
the indigo made glaring stains that jarred with each other, so that it
looked a hideous thing--almost ridiculous.

Besides, the dead child was now unrecognisable. The purple hue of his
lips made the whiteness of his skin more remarkable. His nostrils were
more drawn than before, his eyes more hollow; and his head rested on a
pillow of blue taffeta, surrounded by petals of camelias, autumn roses,
and violets. This was an idea suggested by the chambermaid, and both of
them had thus with pious care arranged the little corpse. The
mantelpiece, covered with a cloth of guipure, supported silver-gilt
candlesticks with bunches of consecrated box in the spaces between them.
At the corners there were a pair of vases in which pastilles were
burning. All these things, taken in conjunction with the cradle,
presented the aspect of an altar; and Frederick recalled to mind the
night when he had watched beside M. Dambreuse's death-bed.

Nearly every quarter of an hour Rosanette drew aside the curtains in
order to take a look at her child. She saw him in imagination, a few
months hence, beginning to walk; then at college, in the middle of the
recreation-ground, playing a game of base; then at twenty years a
full-grown young man; and all these pictures conjured up by her brain
cr