“What is the matter?” she said, terrified.

“Oh, forgive me—­but let me tell you all these horrors.”  And for ten minutes he poured out his wrath.

“But, my dear,” said the unhappy woman, with heroic courage, “these creatures do not know what love means—­such pure and devoted love as you deserve.  How could you, so clear-sighted as you are, dream of competing with millions?”

“Dearest Adeline!” cried the Baron, clasping her to his heart.

The Baroness’ words had shed balm on the bleeding wounds to his vanity.

“To be sure, take away the Duc d’Herouville’s fortune, and she could not hesitate between us!” said the Baron.

“My dear,” said Adeline with a final effort, “if you positively must have mistresses, why do you not seek them, like Crevel, among women who are less extravagant, and of a class that can for a time be content with little?  We should all gain by that arrangement.—­I understand your need—­but I do not understand that vanity——­”

“Oh, what a kind and perfect wife you are!” cried he.  “I am an old lunatic, I do not deserve to have such a wife!”

“I am simply the Josephine of my Napoleon,” she replied, with a touch of melancholy.

“Josephine was not to compare with you!” said he.  “Come; I will play a game of whist with my brother and the children.  I must try my hand at the business of a family man; I must get Hortense a husband, and bury the libertine.”

His frankness so greatly touched poor Adeline, that she said: 

“The creature has no taste to prefer any man in the world to my Hector.  Oh, I would not give you up for all the gold on earth.  How can any woman throw you over who is so happy as to be loved by you?”

The look with which the Baron rewarded his wife’s fanaticism confirmed her in her opinion that gentleness and docility were a woman’s strongest weapons.

But in this she was mistaken.  The noblest sentiments, carried to an excess, can produce mischief as great as do the worst vices.  Bonaparte was made Emperor for having fired on the people, at a stone’s throw from the spot where Louis XVI. lost his throne and his head because he would not allow a certain Monsieur Sauce to be hurt.

On the following morning, Hortense, who had slept with the seal under her pillow, so as to have it close to her all night, dressed very early, and sent to beg her father to join her in the garden as soon as he should be down.

By about half-past nine, the father, acceding to his daughter’s petition, gave her his arm for a walk, and they went along the quays by the Pont Royal to the Place du Carrousel.

“Let us look into the shop windows, papa,” said Hortense, as they went through the little gate to cross the wide square.

“What—­here?” said her father, laughing at her.

“We are supposed to have come to see the pictures, and over there” —­and she pointed to the stalls in front of the houses at a right angle to the Rue du Doyenne—­“look! there are dealers in curiosities and pictures——­”