At that time, a foreign woman was being tried in Paris. She had driven her lover to kill her husband, and had then denounced him in order to rid herself of him and begin life anew with another. A veritable halo of fatality encircled her, for to know her was to love her, and to love her was to lose all honour and regard for humanity. Above all she had very beautiful hands, their beauty shining all the more clear when they were examined for any traces of guilty blood. She appeared before her judges with the grace and prattle of an artless child, charming everybody. Before testifying each day she would remove her gloves. It was the fashion to go to court and submit to the enchantment of her voice, her face whose very blemishes were thought of as the ravages of love or amorous decorations--to give our nerves their daily wrenching. The evening following the announcement of the verdict, we dined with Mme. de Saunois. The accused was the sole topic of conversation. Mme. de H-- summed her up and conferred the following degree upon her: “She is such an exceptional creature, so seductive. She rises above our common measure with such ease. Even her wickedness is attractive.” Every one was approving this opinion, when it occurred to one guest to ask Raymonde, who was seated next him: “What is your idea, Madame?” “I hope she is only a monster.” All the women at the table looked toward me. They visibly pitied me for having cast my lot with a person capable of so narrow and prejudiced an opinion. And I could not help an irritation at this blame that society put upon me through her. From seeing her continually rebel against our forms of art and all our prevailing ideas, I became accustomed to thinking her callous. That was indeed the general impression of her. Her reading was too different from that recommended by success to attach any importance to it. At the theatre, nothing, or almost nothing, succeeded in pleasing her. The splendour of an unusual interpretation caused me to take her one evening to see “Polyeucte.” I was not thinking so much of the play itself, as of the actors. Is not that usual? Do not the names of the players, inscribed in letters of fire on the front of our theatres, eclipse those of the authors and even of the play? In our box, as I called her attention to the acting of the old and eminent actor who played Polyeucte, I was surprised to have no reply. I looked at her more attentively: the tears coursed down her cheeks, though she did not know that she was crying. I had surprised her once before like this in the Coliseum in Rome, when the guide pointed out the gate of the dead. Pauline threw away Severus’s love and her own. Pauline received with open heart the divine spark of the faith. All the pathos of the ardent masterpiece condensed and spiritualised itself on my wife’s face, pale with the force of her emotion. As the curtain fell, I offered explanations of her exaltation.