A LOVE CRIME. Paul Bourget

la Tour des Dames harboured many princes and

      princesses of the footlights. Too small to suit a wealthy family, too

      inconvenient, owing to certain deficiencies in accommodation, for

      tenants accustomed to the completeness of English comfort, it must have

      proved quite seductive to persons accustomed to a semi-country life by

      its attraction as a "home," as well as by the quiet pervading the end of

      the street, which is rarely affronted by vehicles on account of the

      difficulty of the ascent.

      During this November evening, although the windows of the little

      drawing-room looked upon the courtyard, and the latter opened upon the

      street, only a dim and distant murmuring penetrated from without, broken

      by occasional gusts of the north wind. Judging by the whistling of this

      north wind the night must have been a cold one. So, at least, opined a

      fairly young man, one of the three persons assembled in the

      drawing-room, as he rose from his chair, set down his empty cup on the

      tea-tray with a sigh, and looked at the time-piece.

      "Ten o'clock. Must I really go to see the Malhoures this evening? What a

      disaster it is to have a sensible wife who thinks about your future!

      Never get married, Armand. Listen to that wind! I was so comfortable

      here with you. Look here, Helen," he went on, leaning on the back of the

      easy-chair in which his wife was seated, "what will happen if I do not

      put in an appearance this evening?"

      "We shall be discourteous to some very kind people, who have always

      behaved perfectly towards us since we came to Paris a year ago," replied

      the young woman; she stretched out to the fire her slender feet, in the

      pretty patent leather shoes and mauve stockings, the latter being of the

      same colour as her dress. "If I had not my neuralgia!" she added,

      putting her fingers to her temple. "You will make all my excuses to

      them. Come, my poor Alfred, courage!"

      She rose and held out her hand to her husband, who drew her to him in

      order to give her a kiss. Visible pain was depicted on Helen's handsome

      face for a minute, during which she was constrained to submit to this

      caress. Standing thus, in her mauve-coloured, lace-trimmed dress, the

      contrast between the elegance of her entire person and the clumsiness of

      the man whose name she bore was still more striking.

      She was tall, slender, and supple. The delicacy with which her hand

      joined the arm which the sleeve of her dress left half uncovered, the

      fulness of this arm, on which shone the gold of a bracelet, the

      roundness of her dainty waist, the grace of her youthful figure,--all

      revealed in her the blooming of a bodily beauty in harmony with the

      beauty of her head. Her bright chestnut hair, parted simply in the

      centre, half concealed a forehead that was almost too high--a probable

      sign that with her feeling predominated over judgment. She had brown

      eyes, in a fair complexion, such eyes as become hazel or black according

      as the pupil contracts or dilates; and everything in the face declared

      passion, energy, and pride, from the rather too pronounced line of the

      oval, indicating the firm structure of the lower part of the head, to

      the mouth, which was strongly outlined, and from the chin, which was

      worthy of an ancient medal, to the nose, which was nearly straight, and

      was united to the forehead by a noble attachment.

      The pure and living quality of her beauty fully justified the fervour

      depicted on the face of her husband while he was kissing his wife, just

      as the evident aversion of the young woman was explained by the

      unpleasing aspect of her lord and master. They were not creatures of the

      same breed. Alfred Chazel presented the regular type of a middle-class

      Frenchman, who has had to work too diligently, to prepare for too many

      examinations, to spend too many hours over papers or before a desk, at

      an age when the body is developing.

      Although he was scarcely thirty-two, the first tokens of physical wear

      and tear were abundant with him. His hair was thin, his complexion

      looked impoverished, his shoulders were both broad and bony, and there

      was an angularity in his gestures as well as an awkwardness about his

      entire person. His tall figure, his big bones, and his large hand

      suggested a disparity between the initial constitution, which must have

      been robust, and the education, which must have been reducing. Chazel

      carried an eye-glass, which he was always letting fall, for he was

      clumsy with his long, thin hands, as was attested by the tying of the

      white evening cravat, so badly adjusted round his already crumpled

      collar. But when the eye-glass fell, the blue colour of his eyes was the

      better seen--a blue so open, so fresh, so childlike, that the most

      ill-disposed persons would have found it hard to attribute this man's

      weariness to any excess save that of thought.

      His still very youthful smile, displaying white teeth beneath a fair

      beard, which Alfred wore in its entirety, harmonised with this childlike

      frankness of look. And, in fact, Chazel's life had been passed in

      continuous, absorbing work, and in an absolute inexperience of what was

      not "his business," as he used to say. Son of a modest professor of

      chemistry, and grandson of a peasant, Alfred, having inherited aptitude

      for the sciences from his father, and tenacity of purpose from his

      grandfather, had, by dint of energy, and with but moderate abilities,

      been one of the first at the entrance to that École Polytechnique

      which, in the estimation of many excellent intellects, exercises, by its

      overloaded and precocious examinations, a murderous influence upon the

      development of the middle-class youth of our country.

      At twenty-two, Chazel passed out twelfth, and three years later first

      from the School of Roads and Bridges. Sent to Bourges, he fell in love

      with Mademoiselle de Vaivre, whose father, having married a second time,

      could give her only a very slender dowry. The unexpected