know, but we know." And with what a terrible snarl he would say, "My
ideal Mme. Heine!"

"My ideal Mme. Heine!" No doubt "la Mouche" thought she might have
been that, had all the circumstances been different, had Heine not
already been married for years and had he not been a dying man. We
may be quite sure what Heine would have thought of the matter, and
quite sure what she was to him. Mathilde, we know, was unhappy about
the visits of the smart young lady who talked Shakespeare and the
musical glasses so glibly, and who held her husband's hand as he lay
on his mattress-grave, and wore a general air of providing him with
that intellectual companionship which was so painfully lacking in his
home. Yet we who know the whole story, and know her husband far
better than she, know how little she really had to fear from the
visits of "Camille Selden." To Heine "la Mouche" was merely a
brilliant flower, with the dew of youth upon her. His gloomy room
lit up as she entered, and smelled sweet of her young womanhood hours
after she had gone. But "the ideal Mme. Heine"? No! Heine had
found his real Mme. Heine, the woman who had been faithful to him for
years, had faced poverty and calamity with him, and had nursed him
with laughing patience, day in and day out, for years. Heine had good
reason for knowing how "the ideal Mme. Heine" would have treated him
under such circumstances; for little bas-bleue "Mouche" had only to
have a bad cold to stay away from the bedside of her hero, though she
knew how he was counting the minutes to her coming, in the nervous,
hysterical fashion of the invalid. One of his bitterest letters
reproaches her with having kept him waiting in this way:

"Tear my sides, my chest, my face, with red-hot pincers, flay me alive,
shoot, stone me, rather than keep me waiting.