own bed warm and soft; take sedatives and meats, and drinks spiced and sweet, as much as you will. If you have any sorrow or disappointment—and, perhaps, you have—nay, I know you have—seek your own palliatives, in your own chosen resources. Leave me, however. Leave me, I say! "
"I must send another to watch you, meess; I must send Goton."
"I forbid it. Let me alone. Keep your hand off me, and my life, and my troubles. Oh, Madame! in your hand there is both chill and poison. You envenom and you paralyze."
"What have I done, meess? You must not marry Paul. He cannot marry."
"Dog in the manger!" I said; for I knew she secretly wanted him, and had always wanted him. She called him "insupportable;" she railed at him for a "dévot;" she did not love, but she wanted to marry, that she might bind him to her interest. Deep into some of Madame's secrets I had entered—I know not how; by an intuition or an inspiration which came to me—I know not whence. In the course of living with her, too, I had slowly learned, that, unless with an inferior, she must ever be a rival. She was my rival, heart and soul, though secretly,
