When cold despair has gripped a heart still fond,
  When there is no young heart that will respond
    To it in love, the future is a lie. 
  If there is none to weep when he is sad,
  And share his woe, a man were better dead!—­
    And so I soon must die.

  Give me your pity! often I blaspheme
  The sacred name of God.  Does it not seem
    That I was born in vain? 
  Why should I bless him?  Or why thank Him, since
  He might have made me handsome, rich, a prince—­
    And I am poor and plain?

ETIENNE LOUSTEAU. 
  September 1836, Chateau d’Anzy.

“And you have written those verses since yesterday?” cried Clagny in a suspicious tone.

“Dear me, yes, as I was following the game; it is only too evident!  I would gladly have done something better for madame.”

“The verses are exquisite!” cried Dinah, casting up her eyes to heaven.

“They are, alas! the expression of a too genuine feeling,” replied Lousteau, in a tone of deep dejection.

The reader will, of course, have guessed that the journalist had stored these lines in his memory for ten years at least, for he had written them at the time of the Restoration in disgust at being unable to get on.  Madame de la Baudraye gazed at him with such pity as the woes of genius inspire; and Monsieur de Clagny, who caught her expression, turned in hatred against this sham Jeune Malade (the name of an Elegy written by Millevoye).  He sat down to backgammon with the cure of Sancerre.  The Presiding Judge’s son was so extremely obliging as to place a lamp near the two players in such a way as that the light fell full on Madame de la Baudraye, who took up her work; she was embroidering in coarse wool a wicker-plait paper-basket.  The three conspirators sat close at hand.

“For whom are you decorating that pretty basket, madame?” said Lousteau.  “For some charity lottery, perhaps?”

“No,” she said, “I think there is too much display in charity done to the sound of a trumpet.”

“You are very indiscreet,” said Monsieur Gravier.

“Can there be any indiscretion,” said Lousteau, “in inquiring who the happy mortal may be in whose room that basket is to stand?”

“There is no happy mortal in the case,” said Dinah; “it is for Monsieur de la Baudraye.”

The Public Prosecutor looked slily at Madame de la Baudraye and her work, as if he had said to himself, “I have lost my paper-basket!”

“Why, madame, may we not think him happy in having a lovely wife, happy in her decorating his paper-baskets so charmingly?  The colors are red and black, like Robin Goodfellow.  If ever I marry, I only hope that twelve years after, my wife’s embroidered baskets may still be for me.”

“And why should they not be for you?” said the lady, fixing her fine gray eyes, full of invitation, on Etienne’s face.

“Parisians believe in nothing,” said the lawyer bitterly.  “The virtue of women is doubted above all things with terrible insolence.  Yes, for some time past the books you have written, you Paris authors, your farces, your dramas, all your atrocious literature, turn on adultery—­”