ophe which she had thus brought to a climax, madame
threw herself at her husband's feet, wet them with her tears, and thus
concluded the climax to her own satisfaction.

"I esteem and honor you profoundly," she cried, "for keeping your own
counsel as you have done. I am in love! Is this a sentiment which is
easy for me to repress? But what I can do is to confess the fact to you;
to implore you to protect me from myself, to save me from my own folly.
Be my master and be a stern master to me; take me away from this place,
remove me from what has caused all this trouble, console me; I will
forget him, I desire to do so. I do not wish to betray you. I humbly ask
your pardon for the treachery love has suggested to me. Yes, I confess
to you that the love which I pretended to have for my cousin was a
snare set to deceive you. I love him with the love of friendship and no
more.--Oh! forgive me! I can love no one but"--her voice was choked in
passionate sobs--"Oh! let us go away, let us leave Paris!"

She began to weep; her hair was disheveled, her dress in disarray; it
was midnight, and her husband forgave her. From henceforth, the cousin
made his appearance without risk, and the Minotaur devoured one victim
more.

What instructions can we give for contending with such adversaries as
these? Their heads contain all the diplomacy of the congress of Vienna;
they have as much power when they are caught as when they escape. What
man has a mind supple enough to lay aside brute force and strength and
follow his wife through such mazes as these?

To make a false plea every moment, in order to elicit the truth, a true
plea in order to unmask falsehood; to charge the battery when least
expected, and to spike your gun at the very moment of firing it; to
scale the mountain with the enemy, in order to descend to the plain
again five minutes later; to accompany the foe in windings as rapid, as
obscure as those of a plover on the breezes; to obey when obedience is
necessary, and to oppose when resistance is inertial; to traverse the
whole scale of hypotheses as a young artist with one stroke runs from
the lowest to the highest note of his piano; to divine at last the
secret purpose on which a woman is bent; to fear her caresses and to
seek rather to find out what are the thoughts that suggested them and
the pleasure which she derived from them--this is mere child's pay for
the man of intellect and for those lucid and searching imaginations