those impossible ends of the business which supplied their daily bread, the regular income which paid the monthly bills. His stories, it is true, had been very successful; but success of this kind depended so much on the popular taste of the hour, and in her heart, Jeanne, who judged her husband's powers with a lucidity which frightened herself, had small faith in the enduring qualities of this kind of success. Meantime, the long illness had been expensive; all their small stock of savings had been swallowed up by it.
Jeanne took a sort of savage pleasure in despoiling herself of the luxuries which had been hitherto her everyday necessities; her happiness had been bound up in them. She made all the arrangements; decided for both as to their future mode of living; and Karl, after the first resistance, let her do as she pleased. She found a suite of rooms at a modest rent, and fixed the day of their taking possession.
All these multifarious occupations left her little time to spend with her husband. He, nearly recovered now, consented to see some of his friends, but all the spirit had gone out of him this man, who had formerly been so light-hearted, stirring, and gay and active, seemed plunged in a sort of painful stupor. One eye was entirely lost, but, contrary to all expectations, the other eye retained a feeble amount of its seeing power. Karl could distinguish the general outline of objects in his immediate vicinity. He could go about by himself from one room to another, but this piece of unhoped-for good fortune did not seem to cheer him much; so long as he found it impossible to write, everything else was a matter of perfect indifference to him.
"Without hope for the morrow."
Often he would remain for hours together, scarcely budging, refusing admittance to everybody, asking only to be left alone in his silent isolation. He was trying to recover his old powers—seeking ideas for a story, striving to depict a scene of his novel, but all his efforts were without result, the stupor had chained his brain as well as his body, and he could find nothing—nothing. The night was round about him, sad and dark, without hope for the morrow, and while he mourned his loss as an author, his heart as a man was frozen by the maddening, gentle coldness of his wife. Their intimate relationship was becoming almost embarrassing; he no longer knew what to say to her. Quite shocked, he asked himself how they had arrived at such a point, but he could find no solution of the mystery. The future frightened him, with the tormenting dread of a nightmare.
Three months after the accident, the du Boys were installed on the fourth story of a large house on the Quai de la Tournelle. The house was cold and old, with a wide staircase, and vast, high rooms, whose ceilings were upheld by enormous joists. Red tiles replaced the glancing waxed floors they were accustomed to; and on the whole, it was not very accommodating, but, at least, there was room for their books, which was very essential, and the rent was low, which was even more essential still.
Great catastrophes have their smaller sides. Everyday cares deduct in some measure from heroic misfortune, and prevent the victims from losing themselves altogether in the contemplation of their
