In vain persons, be they male or female, there is a complacent self- satisfaction in any momentary personal success, however little that success may conduce to--nay, however much it may militate against--the objects to which their vanity itself devotes its more permanent desires. A vain woman may be very anxious to win A------, the magnificent, as a partner for life; and yet feel a certain triumph when a glance of her eye has made an evening's conquest of the pitiful B-------, although by that achievement she incurs the imminent hazard of losing A------ altogether. So, when Gustave Rameau quitted Isaura, his first feeling was that of triumph. His eloquence had subdued her will; she had not finally discarded him. But as he wandered abstractedly in the biting air, his self-complacency was succeeded by mortification and discontent. He felt that he had committed himself to promises which he was by no means prepared to keep. True, the promises were vague in words; but in substance they were perfectly clear--"to spare, nay, to aid all that Isaura esteemed and reverenced." How was this possible to him? How could he suddenly change the whole character of his writings?--how become the defender of marriage and property, of church and religion?--how proclaim himself so utter an apostate? If he did, how become a leader of the fresh revolution? how escape being its victim? Cease to write altogether? But then how live? His pen was his sole subsistence, save 30 sous a-day as a National Guard--30 sous a day to him, who, in order to be Sybarite in tastes, was Spartan in doctrine. Nothing better just at that moment than Spartan doctrine, "Live on black broth and fight the enemy." And the journalists in vogue so thrived upon that patriotic sentiment, that they were the last persons compelled to drink the black broth or to fight the enemy. "Those women are such idiots when they meddle in politics," grumbled between his teeth the enthusiastic advocate of Woman's Rights on all matters of love. "And," he continued, soliloquising, "it is not as if the girl had any large or decent dot; it is not as if she said, 'In return for the sacrifice of your popularity, your prospects, your opinions, I give you not only a devoted heart, but an excellent table and a capital fire and plenty of pocket-money.' _Sacre bleu_! when I think of that frozen salon, and possibly the leg of a mouse for dinner, and a virtuous homily by way of grace, the prospect is not alluring; and the girl herself is not so pretty as she was--grown very thin. _Sur mon ame_, I think she asks too much--far more than she is worth. No, No; I had better have accepted her dismissal. _Elle n'est pas digne de moi_."