“Ah!” replied Madame Evangelista, in a tone of voice big with suggestions which made the girl’s heart throb, “those discussions about the contract have made me distrustful.  I have my doubts about him—­But don’t be troubled, dear child,” she added, taking her daughter by the neck and kissing her.  “I will not leave you long alone.  Whenever my return can take place without making difficulty between you, whenever Paul can rightly judge me, we will begin once more our happy little life, our evening confidences—­”

“Oh! mother, how can you think of living without your Natalie?”

“Because, dear angel, I shall live for her.  My mother’s heart will be satisfied in the thought that I contribute, as I ought, to your future happiness.”

“But, my dear, adorable mother, must I be alone with Paul, here, now, all at once?  What will become of me? what will happen? what must I do? what must I not do?”

“Poor child! do you think that I would utterly abandon you to your first battle?  We will write to each other three times a week like lovers.  We shall thus be close to each other’s hearts incessantly.  Nothing can happen to you that I shall not know, and I can save you from all misfortune.  Besides, it would be too ridiculous if I never went to see you; it would seem to show dislike or disrespect to your husband; I will always spend a month or two every year with you in Paris.”

“Alone, already alone, and with him!” cried Natalie in terror, interrupting her mother.

“But you wish to be his wife?”

“Yes, I wish it.  But tell me how I should behave,—­you, who did what you pleased with my father.  You know the way; I’ll obey you blindly.”

Madame Evangelista kissed her daughter’s forehead.  She had willed and awaited this request.

“Child, my counsels must adept themselves to circumstances.  All men are not alike.  The lion and the frog are not more unlike than one man compared with another,—­morally, I mean.  Do I know to-day what will happen to you to-morrow?  No; therefore I can only give you general advice upon the whole tenor of your conduct.”

“Dear mother, tell me, quick, all that you know yourself.”

“In the first place, my dear child, the cause of the failure of married women who desire to keep their husbands’ hearts—­and,” she said, making a parenthesis, “to keep their hearts and rule them is one and the same thing—­Well, the principle cause of conjugal disunion is to be found in perpetual intercourse, which never existed in the olden time, but which has been introduced into this country of late years with the mania for family.  Since the Revolution the manners and customs of the bourgeois have invaded the homes of the aristocracy.  This misfortune is due to one of their writers, Rousseau, an infamous heretic, whose ideas were all anti-social and who pretended, I don’t know how, to justify the most senseless things.  He declared that all