"Are you not a standing proof that I am right? Why don't you cry, as any other ordinary woman would do, and fall upon my neck and beseech me to remain, and say that I am your darling Adam--your only love--your handsome Adam, though, by-the-bye, I am not handsome, and promise everything, whether you can perform it or not? There you stand, and don't know how to help yourself! Am I to give up my art and my young years for the pleasure of staring at you? And supposing we should have children, and they take after you! Do you expect that I shall be able to compose the stupidest birthday ode, with six or seven boys and girls, all as lovely as pictures, and as stupid, sitting round me and staring at me? But we will not part in enmity; and so I tell you, in all love and friendship, that you can no longer be my wife! I will away to Paris as soon as I can raise money enough for the journey; you can return to your parents, or, if you like, you can go to my old uncle, who is so fond of you; he will take good care of you--you shall want for nothing; and if you should have a child, I will keep it as my own--but, remain with you I _cannot_, Marion! By my soul's salvation! a poet I am, and a poet I will remain--and weariness is poison to the merrie art! Now I am going to my uncle--be a good girl, and let us part friends." He stretched out his hand towards her, but she saw it not for tears. He thought it needless on that account to wait and see whether she would behave as he had told her other women would do under the circumstances; he turned hastily towards the door and disappeared into the house. An hour after the wedded pair had thus parted "in friendship," the door of a stately house, in which lived the rich senator, Adam's uncle, was thrown open, and Adam stepped hastily out, in high excitement. He hurried onwards without regarding which way he took, and now and then scraps of his internal conversation with himself burst forth, as he clenched his fist or twisted his fingers in his long round-cut hair. "The old shark!" he growled. "And yet he had got rags of virtuous poverty to cover the nakedness of his avarice! What is it to him if I and my wife choose to agree to a friendly separation? I wish he would take her himself, if it were not a pity for her, pretty young thing! Truly, whether I moulder here or not touches not his money-bags; but, to travel and to see the world, and gain wisdom--ay! that pinches Master Money-bags sore! Pah! because he gave me the cottage, and arranged my household, am I to freeze in Arras, and blunder about with those rogues of balladmakers, and hide my light under a bushel? If I am obliged to travel like a mountebank, and train dogs and apes to get to Paris, I'll do it! I'll show the old gold-scratcher that Adam de la Halle is no petticoat knight, but knows how to follow his own way."