would not have shamed a Correggio and your beautiful waved tresses, of the gold of ripened grain, that you lost the half of—the pity of it!—at the birth of your second child!
Portionless, you were? Yes, you had no dowry. How could it be otherwise with the daughter of an honest, second head-clerk, whose recommendation from his superiors uniformly consisted of these blighting words: "A good man in his place, very useful and unassuming; "a poor fellow who, when he went with you to your dances, never dared sit down to whist at ten sous the point, and was continually feeling in his waistcoat pocket to see if he had not lost the three francs that were to pay the cab-fare home?
Portionless!—Every mirror in the room as you made your entry, hanging on your father's arm, radiant in clouds of pink, gave you assurance that no portion was needed in your case. Who would have suspected that the mother, detained at home for lack of finery, had ironed out your skirt on the dining-room table and that your dress was the result of your own labors, cut and sewed by your own hands? Were you not gloved up to the elbows? How could anyone have known of the needle-pricks that you had on your finger-ends?
Listen to the old polka that the broken-winded barrel-organ is playing in the dim November twilight. Does it not remind you of the song of a crazy woman, broken by sobs?
Many a time were you invited to dance that polka by the handsome, dark young man with the military mustache, so elegant in his well-cut evening suit, whom you used to speak of to yourself in thought as
