by "intellectual" conversation--and the value of simple
woman-goodness, the woman-goodness that orders a household so
skillfully that your home is a work of art, the woman-goodness that
glories in that "simple" thing we call motherhood, the woman-goodness
that is almost happy when you are ill because it will be so wonderful
to nurse you. Superior persons often smile at these Mathildes of the
great. They have smiled no little at Mathilde Crescence Mirat; but
he who was perhaps the greatest mocker that ever lived knew better
than to laugh at Mathilde. The abysses of his brain no one can, or
even dare, explore--but, listen as we will at the door of that
infernal pit of laughter, we shall hear no laugh against his faithful
little Mathilde. It is not at Mathilde he laughs, but at the
precious little blue-stocking, who freshened the last months of his
life with a final infatuation--that still unidentified "Camille
Selden" whom he playfully called "la Mouche."

"La Mouche," naturally, had a very poor opinion of Madame Heine, and
you need not be a cynic to enjoy this passage with which she opens her
famous remembrances of "The Last Days of Heinrich Heine":

"When I first saw Heinrich Heine he lived on the fifth floor of a
house situated on the Avenue Matignon, not far from the Rond-Point of
the Champs-Elysees. His windows, overlooking the avenue, opened on a
narrow balcony, covered in hot weather with a striped linen awning,
such as appears in front of small cafes. The apartments consisted of
three or four rooms--the dining-room and two rooms used by the master
and the mistress of the house. A very low couch, behind a screen
encased in wall-paper, several chairs, and opposite the door a
walnut-wood secretary, formed the entire furniture of the invalid's
chamber. I nearly forgot to mention two framed engravings, dated