idente de la
Roulandiere, at Viviers.

"PARIS.

"Ah! my poor Claire, could you have known how many wretched little
griefs your innocent letter would awaken, you never would have written
it. Certainly no friend, and not even an enemy, on seeing a woman with a
thousand mosquito-bites and a plaster over them, would amuse herself by
tearing it off and counting the stings.

"I will begin by telling you that for a woman of twenty-seven, with a
face still passable, but with a form a little too much like that of the
Emperor Nicholas for the humble part I play, I am happy! Let me tell you
why: Adolphe, rejoicing in the deceptions which have fallen upon me
like a hail-storm, smoothes over the wounds in my self-love by so much
affection, so many attentions, and such charming things, that, in good
truth, women--so far as they are simply women--would be glad to find
in the man they marry defects so advantageous. But all men of letters
(Adolphe, alas! is barely a man of letters), who are beings not a bit
less irritable, nervous, fickle and eccentric than women, are far from
possessing such solid qualities as those of Adolphe, and I hope they
have not all been as unfortunate as he.

"Ah! Claire, we love each other well enough for me to tell you
the simple truth. I have saved my husband, dear, from profound but
skillfully concealed poverty. Far from receiving twenty thousand francs
a year, he has not earned that sum in the entire fifteen years that he
has been at Paris. We occupy a third story in the rue Joubert, and pay
twelve hundred francs for it; we have some eighty-five hundred francs
left, with which I endeavor to keep house honorably.

"I have brought Adolphe luck; for since our marriage, he has obtained
the control of a feuilleton which is worth four hundred francs a month
to him, though it takes but a small portion of his time. He owes this
situation to an investment. We employed the seventy thousand francs left
me by my Aunt Carabas in giving security for a newspaper; on this we get
nine per cent, and we have stock besides. Since this transaction, which
was concluded some ten months ago, our income has doubled, and we now
possess a competence, I can complain of my marriage in a pecuniary
point of view no more than as regards my affections. My vanity alone
has suffered, and my ambition has been swamped. You will understand the
various petty troubles which have assailed me, by a single specimen.

"Adolphe, you remember,