bill for two thousand francs every three months. I have promised the
man a market-garden with a house on it close to the porter's lodge in
the Rue Saint-Maur. I hold this ground in the name of a clerk of the
law courts. The smallest indiscretion would ruin the gardener's
prospects. Honorine has her little house, a garden, and a splendid
hothouse, for a rent of five hundred francs a year. There she lives
under the name of her housekeeper, Madame Gobain, the old woman of
impeccable discretion whom I was so lucky as to find, and whose
affection Honorine has won. But her zeal, like that of the gardener,
is kept hot by the promise of reward at the moment of success. The
porter and his wife cost me dreadfully dear for the same reasons.
However, for three years Honorine has been happy, believing that she
owes to her own toil all the luxury of flowers, dress, and comfort.

"'Oh! I know what you are about to say,' cried the Count, seeing a
question in my eyes and on my lips. 'Yes, yes; I have made the
attempt. My wife was formerly living in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
One day when, from what Gobain told me, I believed in some chance of a
reconciliation, I wrote by post a letter, in which I tried to
propitiate my wife--a letter written and re-written twenty times! I
will not describe my agonies. I went from the Rue Payenne to the Rue
de Reuilly like a condemned wretch going from the Palais de Justice to
his execution, but he goes on a cart, and I was on foot. It was dark
--there was a fog; I went to meet Madame Gobain, who was to come and
tell me what my wife had done. Honorine, on recognizing my writing,
had thrown the letter into the fire without reading it.--"Madame
Gobain," she had exclaimed, "I leave this to-morrow."

"'What a dagger-stroke was this to a man who found inexhaustible
pleasure in the trickery by which he gets the finest Lyons velvet at