him of the happy result of the operation, and to add that Love was
wiser than all the sciences.

"'Now,' said La Palferine one day, 'what am I to do to get rid of
Claudine?'

"'Why, she is not at all troublesome; she leaves you master of your
actions,' objected we.

"'That is true,' returned La Palferine, 'but I do not choose that
anything shall slip into my life without my consent.'

"From that day he set himself to torment Claudine. It seemed that he
held the bourgeoise, the nobody, in utter horror; nothing would
satisfy him but a woman with a title. Claudine, it was true, had made
progress; she had learned to dress as well as the best-dressed woman
of the Faubourg Saint-Germain; she had freed her bearing of the
unhallowed traces; she walked with a chastened, inimitable grace; but
this was not enough. This praise of her enabled Claudine to swallow
down the rest.

"But one day La Palferine said, 'If you wish to be the mistress of one
La Palferine, poor, penniless, and without prospects as he is, you
ought at least to represent him worthily. You should have a carriage
and liveried servants and a title. Give me all the gratifications of
vanity that will never be mine in my own person. The woman whom I
honor with my regard ought never to go on foot; if she is bespattered
with mud, I suffer. That is how I am made. If she is mine, she must be
admired of all Paris. All Paris shall envy me my good fortune. If some
little whipper-snapper seeing a brilliant countess pass in her