The lawyer was magnanimous, nay, truly great.  To this declaration, in which Dinah’s soul thrilled, he replied in heartrending tones: 

“I wanted to go to see you, to be sure that you were loved:  I shall now be easy and no longer alarmed as to your future.—­But will your lover appreciate the magnitude of your sacrifice; is there any gratitude in his affection?”

“Come to the Rue des Martyrs and you will see!”

“Yes, I will call,” he replied.  “I have already passed your door without daring to inquire for you.—­You do not yet know the literary world.  There are glorious exceptions, no doubt; but these men of letters drag terrible evils in their train; among these I account publicity as one of the greatest, for it blights everything.  A woman may commit herself with—­”

“With a Public Prosecutor?” the Baronne put in with a smile.

“Well!—­and then after a rupture there is still something to fall back on; the world has known nothing.  But with a more or less famous man the public is thoroughly informed.  Why look there!  What an example you have close at hand!  You are sitting back to back with the Comtesse Marie Vandenesse, who was within an ace of committing the utmost folly for a more celebrated man than Lousteau—­for Nathan—­and now they do not even recognize each other.  After going to the very edge of the precipice, the Countess was saved, no one knows how; she neither left her husband nor her house; but as a famous man was scorned, she was the talk of the town for a whole winter.  But her husband’s great fortune, great name, and high position, but for the admirable management of that true statesman—­whose conduct to his wife, they say, was perfect—­she would have been ruined; in her position no other woman would have remained respected as she is.”

“And how was Sancerre when you came away?” asked Madame de la Baudraye, to change the subject.

“Monsieur de la Baudraye announced that your expected confinement after so many years made it necessary that it should take place in Paris, and that he had insisted on your going to be attended by the first physicians,” replied Monsieur de Clagny, guessing what it was that Dinah most wanted to know.  “And so, in spite of the commotion to which your departure gave rise, you still have your legal status.”

“Why!” she exclaimed, “can Monsieur de la Baudraye still hope——­”

“Your husband, madame, did what he always does—­made a little calculation.”

The lawyer left the box when the journalist returned, bowing with dignity.

“You are a greater hit than the piece,” said Etienne to Dinah.

This brief triumph brought greater happiness to the poor woman than she had ever known in the whole of her provincial existence; still, as they left the theatre she was very grave.

“What ails you, my Didine?” asked Lousteau.

“I am wondering how a woman succeeds in conquering the world?”