She consents to relinquish the stage; surely I could wean her too from
intimate friendship with a woman whose genius has so fatal an effect upon
enthusiastic minds. And then--and then?"

He fell into a delightful revery; and contemplating Isaura as his future
wife, he surrounded her sweet image with all those attributes of dignity
and respect with which an Englishman is accustomed to invest the destined
bearer of his name, the gentle sovereign of his household, the sacred
mother of his children. In this picture the more brilliant qualities of
Isaura found, perhaps, but faint presentation. Her glow of sentiment,
her play of fancy, her artistic yearnings for truths remote, for the
invisible fairyland of beautiful romance, receded into the background of
the picture. It was all these, no doubt, that had so strengthened and
enriched the love at first sight, which had shaken the equilibrium of his
positive existence; and yet he now viewed all these as subordinate to the
one image of mild decorous matronage into which wedlock was to transform
the child of genius, longing for angel wings and unlimited space.




CHAPTER V.

On quitting the sorry apartment of the false M. Lamb, Lebeau walked on
with slow steps and bended head, like a man absorbed in thought. He
threaded a labyrinth of obscure streets, no longer in the Faubourg
Montmartre, and dived at last into one of the few courts which preserve
the cachet of the moyen age untouched by the ruthless spirit of
improvement which during the second empire has so altered the face of
Paris. At the bottom of the court stood a large house, much dilapidated,