xistences, like that of Birotteau, live sunk in sorrows, instead
of transmuting them into doctrines of experience: they let them saturate
their being, and are worn-out, finally, by falling more and more under
the weight of past misfortunes.

When the two couples reached the path which leads to the woods
of Aulnay, placed like a crown upon the prettiest hillside in the
neighborhood of Paris, and from which the Vallee-aux-Loups is seen in
all its coquetry, the beauty of the day, the charm of the landscape, the
first spring verdure, the delicious memory of the happiest day of all
his youth, loosened the tight chords in Cesar's soul; he pressed the arm
of his wife against his beating heart; his eye was no longer glassy, for
the light of pleasure once more brightened in it.

"At last," said Constance to her husband, "I see you again, my poor
Cesar. I think we have all behaved well enough to allow ourselves a
little pleasure now and then."

"Ought I?" said the poor man. "Ah! Constance, thy affection is all that
remains to me. Yes, I have lost even my old self-confidence; I have no
strength left; my only desire is that I may live to die discharged of
debt on earth. Thou, dear wife, thou who art my wisdom and my prudence,
thou whose eyes saw clear, thou who art irreproachable, thou canst have
pleasure. I alone--of us three--am guilty. Eighteen months ago, in the
midst of that fatal ball, I saw my Constance, the only woman I have ever
loved, more beautiful than the young girl I followed along this path
twenty years ago--like our children yonder! In eighteen months I have
blasted that beauty,--my pride, my legitimate and sanctioned pride. I
love thee better since I know thee well. Oh, _dear_!" he said, giving to
the word a tone which reached to the inmost heart of his wife, "I would
rather have thee scold me, than see thee so tender to my pain."

"I did not think," she said, "that after twenty years of married life
the love of a wife for her husband could deepen."

These words drove from Cesar's mind, for one brief moment, all his
sorrows; his heart was so true that they were to him a fortune. He
walked forward almost joyously to _their_ tree, which by chance had not
been felled. Husband and wife sat down beneath it, watching Anselme and
Cesarine, who were sauntering across the grassy slope without perceiving
them, thinking probably that they were still following.

"Mademoiselle," Anselme was saying, "do not think me so base