And this was said with such splendid coolness that no one would have dared to laugh at the little man.  Only Monsieur Boirouge, the Presiding Judge, remarked: 

“In your place, I should not be happy unless I had a daughter.”

“Well, I shall go to Paris before long——­” said the Baron.

In the early part of 1842 Madame de la Baudraye, feeling that she was to Lousteau no more than a reserve in the background, had again sacrificed herself absolutely to secure his comfort; she had resumed her black raiment, but now it was in sign of mourning, for her pleasure was turning to remorse.  She was too often put to shame not to feel the weight of the chain, and her mother found her sunk in those moods of meditation into which visions of the future cast unhappy souls in a sort of torpor.

Madame Piedefer, by the advice of her spiritual director, was on the watch for the moment of exhaustion, which the priest told her would inevitably supervene, and then she pleaded in behalf of the children.  She restricted herself to urging that Dinah and Lousteau should live apart, not asking her to give him up.  In real life these violent situations are not closed as they are in books, by death or cleverly contrived catastrophes; they end far less poetically—­in disgust, in the blighting of every flower of the soul, in the commonplace of habit, and very often too in another passion, which robs a wife of the interest which is traditionally ascribed to women.  So, when common sense, the law of social proprieties, family interest—­all the mixed elements which, since the Restoration, have been dignified by the mane of Public Morals, out of sheer aversion to the name of the Catholic religion—­where this is seconded by a sense of insults a little too offensive; when the fatigue of constant self-sacrifice has almost reached the point of exhaustion; and when, under these circumstances, a too cruel blow—­one of those mean acts which a man never lets a woman know of unless he believes himself to be her assured master —­puts the crowning touch to her revulsion and disenchantment, the moment has come for the intervention of the friend who undertakes the cure.  Madame Piedefer had no great difficulty now in removing the film from her daughter’s eyes.

She sent for Monsieur de Clagny, who completed the work by assuring Madame de la Baudraye that if she would give up Etienne, her husband would allow her to keep the children and to live in Paris, and would restore her to the command of her own fortune.

“And what a life you are leading!” said he.  “With care and judgment, and the support of some pious and charitable persons, you may have a salon and conquer a position.  Paris is not Sancerre.”

Dinah left it to Monsieur de Clagny to negotiate a reconciliation with the old man.

Monsieur de la Baudraye had sold his wine well, he had sold his wool, he had felled his timber, and, without telling his wife, he had come to Paris to invest two hundred thousand francs in the purchase of a delightful residence in the Rue de l’Arcade, that was being sold in liquidation of an aristocratic House that was in difficulties.  He had been a member of the Council for the Department since 1826, and now, paying ten thousand francs in taxes, he was doubly qualified for a peerage under the conditions of the new legislation.