Although, throughout the day, the husband and wife had offered her the pleasing spectacle of complete happiness, Camille wondered why one of the most superior men she had ever met, and whom she had seen too in Paris drawing-rooms, remained as Consul-General at Genoa when he possessed a fortune of a hundred odd thousand francs a year. But, at the same time, she had discerned, by many of the little nothings which women perceive with the intelligence of the Arab sage in _Zadig_, that the husband was faithfully devoted. These two handsome creatures would no doubt love each other without a misunderstanding till the end of their days. So Camille said to herself alternately, “What is wrong?--Nothing is wrong,” following the misleading symptoms of the Consul’s demeanor; and he, it may be said, had the absolute calmness of Englishmen, of savages, of Orientals, and of consummate diplomatists. In discussing literature, they spoke of the perennial stock-in-trade of the republic of letters--woman’s sin. And they presently found themselves confronted by two opinions: When a woman sins, is the man or the woman to blame? The three women present--the Ambassadress, the Consul’s wife, and Mademoiselle des Touches, women, of course, of blameless reputations--were without pity for the woman. The men tried to convince these fair flowers of their sex that some virtues might remain in a woman after she had fallen. “How long are we going to play at hide-and-seek in this way?” said Leon de Lora. “_Cara vita_, go and put your children to bed, and send me by Gina the little black pocket-book that lies on my Boule cabinet,” said the Consul to his wife. She rose without a reply, which shows that she loved her husband very truly, for she already knew French enough to understand that her husband was getting rid of her. “I will tell you a story in which I played a part, and after that we can discuss it, for it seems to me childish to practise with the scalpel on an imaginary body. Begin by dissecting a corpse.” Every one prepared to listen, with all the greater readiness because they had all talked enough, and this is the moment to be chosen for telling a story. This, then, is the Consul-General’s tale:-- “When I was two-and-twenty, and had taken my degree in law, my old uncle, the Abbe Loraux, then seventy-two years old, felt it necessary to provide me with a protector, and to start me in some career. This excellent man, if not indeed a saint, regarded each year of his life as a fresh gift from God. I need not tell you that the father confessor of a Royal Highness had no difficulty in finding a place for a young man brought up by himself, his sister’s only child. So one day, towards the end of the year 1824, this venerable old man, who for five years had been Cure of the White Friars at Paris, came up to the room I had in his house, and said: