neighborhood in which she lived; a day when (like the child taken by
Napoleon from a tender home) she taught her feet to trample through
mud and snow, she trained her nerves to bullets and all her being to
the passive obedience of a soldier.

These things, of which I here make a summary, she told me in all their
dark extent, with every piteous detail of conjugal battles lost and
fruitless struggles.

"You would have to live here many months," she said, in conclusion,
"to understand what difficulties I have met with in improving
Clochegourde; what persuasions I have had to use to make him do a
thing which was most important to his interests. You cannot imagine
the childish glee he has shown when anything that I advised was not at
once successful. All that turned out well he claimed for himself. Yes,
I need an infinite patience to bear his complaints when I am
half-exhausted in the effort to amuse his weary hours, to sweeten his
life and smooth the paths which he himself has strewn with stones. The
reward he gives me is that awful cry: 'Let me die, life is a burden to
me!' When visitors are here and he enjoys them, he forgets his gloom
and is courteous and polite. You ask me why he cannot be so to his
family. I cannot explain that want of loyalty in a man who is truly
chivalrous. He is quite capable of riding at full speed to Paris to
buy me a set of ornaments, as he did the other day before the ball.
Miserly in his household, he would be lavish upon me if I wished it. I
would it were reversed; I need nothing for myself, but the wants of
the household are many. In my strong desire to make him happy, and not
reflecting that I might be a mother, I began my married life by
letting him treat me as a victim, I, who at that time by using a few
caresses could have led him like a child--but I was unable to play a