“There are two ways.  One is by being Madame de Stael, the other is by having two hundred thousand francs a year.”

“Society,” said she, “asserts its hold on us by appealing to our vanity, our love of appearances.—­Pooh!  We will be philosophers!”

That evening was the last gleam of the delusive well-being in which Madame de la Baudraye had lived since coming to Paris.  Three days later she observed a cloud on Lousteau’s brow as he walked round the little garden-plot smoking a cigar.  This woman, who had acquired from her husband the habit and the pleasure of never owing anybody a sou, was informed that the household was penniless, with two quarters’ rent owing, and on the eve, in fact, of an execution.

This reality of Paris life pierced Dinah’s heart like a thorn; she repented of having tempted Etienne into the extravagances of love.  It is so difficult to pass from pleasure to work, that happiness has wrecked more poems than sorrows ever helped to flow in sparkling jets.  Dinah, happy in seeing Etienne taking his ease, smoking a cigar after breakfast, his face beaming as he basked like a lizard in the sunshine, could not summon up courage enough to make herself the bum-bailiff of a magazine.

It struck her that through the worthy Migeon, Pamela’s father, she might pawn the few jewels she possessed, on which her “uncle,” for she was learning to talk the slang of the town, advanced her nine hundred francs.  She kept three hundred for her baby-clothes and the expenses of her illness, and joyfully presented the sum due to Lousteau, who was ploughing, furrow by furrow, or, if you will, line by line, through a novel for a periodical.

“Dearest heart,” said she, “finish your novel without making any sacrifice to necessity; polish the style, work up the subject.—­I have played the fine lady too long; I am going to be the housewife and attend to business.”

For the last four months Etienne had been taking Dinah to the Cafe Riche to dine every day, a corner being always kept for them.  The countrywoman was in dismay at being told that five hundred francs were owing for the last fortnight.

“What! we have been drinking wine at six francs a bottle!  A sole Normande costs five francs!—­and twenty centimes for a roll?” she exclaimed, as she looked through the bill Lousteau showed her.

“Well, it makes very little difference to us whether we are robbed at a restaurant or by a cook,” said Lousteau.

“Henceforth, for the cost of your dinner, you shall live like a prince.”

Having induced the landlord to let her have a kitchen and two servants’ rooms, Madame de la Baudraye wrote a few lines to her mother, begging her to send her some linen and a loan of a thousand francs.  She received two trunks full of linen, some plate, and two thousand francs, sent by the hand of an honest and pious cook recommended her by her mother.