"Possibly; but you are supposed to own your hôtel temporarily. People suppose that you are engaged in arranging a settlement with Monsieur Antoine. You must show yourself, so that a mysteriously prolonged absence may not furnish food for slanderous suspicions." "What do you expect people will say?" "All that they can say of a woman who has something to conceal." "What does it matter to me?" "For Julien's sake you ought to be most careful of your reputation, which we have succeeded thus far in preserving intact." "Julien knows perfectly well that I have nothing with which to reproach myself." "It is because he knows it that he will fly at the throat of the first man who presumes to say a word against you." "Let us go, then," said Julie, ringing for Camille. "I will do whatever you choose, my friend, provided that I need never see Monsieur Antoine again!" "Do not say that, madame; I have a single remaining hope." "Ah! you still have hope, have you?" said Julie with her heartrending smile. "I should lie if I said that it was very well founded," replied Marcel, sadly; "but I cannot abandon it until the last extremity. Do not deprive me of the means of breaking down Monsieur Antoine's obstinacy." "What is the use?" queried Julie. "Didn't you tell me that the marriage of a titled woman to a plebeian meant unhappiness, persecution and a horrible struggle for the plebeian?" "Ah! madame, if the plebeian were very rich, most people would forgive you." "Then you would have me ask your uncle to enrich the man I love? I must dishonor myself in my own eyes--in Julien's too, perhaps--to earn the forgiveness of a society without honor and without heart? You ask too much of me, Marcel; you abuse my utter prostration. May God give me strength to do but one thing,--resist you; for, after that disgrace, I should feel that I had delayed too long to die." Poor Marcel was overdone with fatigue and disappointment. He wore himself out in words and efforts of every sort, and he succeeded only in rescuing all his friends from poverty and saving the material comforts of life for them. He could do nothing for their mental condition, and he said to his wife every night: "My dear love, there is nothing falser than reality! I am moving heaven and earth to provide them with the means of living, and I succeed only in killing them by inches." VIII