By this time the good Abbe, Madame de la Baudraye’s counselor, was dead; he would certainly have prevented her rushing into public life.  But three years of work without recognition weighed on Dinah’s soul, and she accepted the clatter of fame as a substitute for her disappointed ambitions.  Poetry and dreams of celebrity, which had lulled her grief since her meeting with Anna Grossetete, no longer sufficed to exhaust the activity of her morbid heart.  The Abbe Duret, who had talked of the world when the voice of religion was impotent, who understood Dinah, and promised her a happy future by assuring her that God would compensate her for her sufferings bravely endured, —­this good old man could no longer stand between the opening to sin and the handsome young woman he had called his daughter.

The wise old priest had more than once endeavored to enlighten Dinah as to her husband’s character, telling her that the man could hate; but women are not ready to believe in such force in weak natures, and hatred is too constantly in action not to be a vital force.  Dinah, finding her husband incapable of love, denied him the power to hate.

“Do not confound hatred and vengeance,” said the Abbe.  “They are two different sentiments.  One is the instinct of small minds; the other is the outcome of law which great souls obey.  God is avenged, but He does not hate.  Hatred is a vice of narrow souls; they feed it with all their meanness, and make it a pretext for sordid tyranny.  So beware of offending Monsieur de la Baudraye; he would forgive an infidelity, because he could make capital of it, but he would be doubly implacable if you should touch him on the spot so cruelly wounded by Monsieur Milaud of Nevers, and would make your life unendurable.”

Now, at the time when the whole countryside—­Nevers and Sancerre, Le Morvan and Le Berry—­was priding itself on Madame de la Baudraye, and lauding her under the name of Jan Diaz, “little La Baudraye” felt her glory a mortal blow.  He alone knew the secret source of Paquita la Sevillane.  When this terrible work was spoken of, everybody said of Dinah—­“Poor woman!  Poor soul!”

The women rejoiced in being able to pity her who had so long oppressed them; never had Dinah seemed to stand higher in the eyes of the neighborhood.

The shriveled old man, more wrinkled, yellower, feebler than ever, gave no sign; but Dinah sometimes detected in his eyes, as he looked at her, a sort of icy venom which gave the lie to his increased politeness and gentleness.  She understood at last that this was not, as she had supposed, a mere domestic squabble; but when she forced an explanation with her “insect,” as Monsieur Gravier called him, she found the cold, hard impassibility of steel.  She flew into a passion; she reproached him for her life these eleven years past; she made —­intentionally—­what women call a scene.  But “little La Baudraye” sat in an armchair with his eyes shut, and listened phlegmatically to the storm.  And, as usual, the dwarf got the better of his wife.  Dinah saw that she had done wrong in writing; she vowed never to write another line, and she kept her vow.