“Oh! mamma,” said Adeline, throwing herself into her mother’s arms, “don’t be angry with Edouard. Alas! It is I alone who am guilty. It was I who urged him to leave the place he had. But could I have anticipated? It is that Dufresne, it is his advice which turns my husband’s head.” “My dear Adeline, in the early days of your married life, you should have taken possession of your husband’s mind, and accustomed him to do what you wanted; at that time it would have been very easy for you, but you did just the opposite.” “I simply tried to please him, and we had but one will then! But soon I am going to be a mother. Ah! how impatiently I await that moment! I am sure that his child’s caresses will make Edouard forget all his schemes of wealth and grandeur.” “May you say true!” The term marked by nature approached. Edouard realized that that was no time to change his abode, so he said no more of his plans, and Adeline thought that he had abandoned them. Soon she brought into the world a pretty little girl, a faithful image of her mother’s charms. Edouard desired that Dufresne should be his child’s godfather, but Madame Germeuil refused him as an associate; so it was necessary to give way, and to take in his place an old annuitant, most upright, orderly and methodical, who gave the godmother three boxes of bonbons and two pairs of gloves, and promised to dine every week with the young mother, in order to learn how his goddaughter was coming on. Edouard did not say a word, but he awaited his wife’s entire recovery before putting his plans into execution; and he secretly hoped that Madame Germeuil would persist in her refusal to change her lodgings, in order that he might no longer have beneath his roof a mother-in-law whose advice and reproaches were beginning to be distasteful to him. Adeline was engrossed by the joy of being a mother; she nursed her child, in spite of all that Edouard could say to prove that that was not done in good society; but in that matter Adeline resisted her husband, the mother-love carried the day, and that new sentiment abated in some degree the force of the sentiment which hitherto had reigned despotically in her heart. For some time Madame Dolban had been a less frequent visitor at the Murville house; Adeline and her mother did not know the reason, but they were not sorry to be less often in the company of Dufresne, who ordinarily accompanied Madame Dolban. They thought that if he saw him less often, Edouard would pay less heed to the new dreams of wealth which had been suggested to him by that young man.