"Ah! don't tell me!" exclaimed Madame Margot, lifting her right arm, protruding her head, and shaking her forefinger at him. "You can not understand, eh? Ah, I'm too old a bird for that, and I haven't forgotten how I was treated once by Margot!"
"What do you mean?" inquired Andrè, seriously.
"Mean! Ah, ah! it is very good, M. Folitton! You should have been made an actor!"
"Madame Margot, I can not joke with you, nor read your riddles. Julienne's ailment is a serious matter to me."
"Well, well! It is amusing to hear him!
But one word in your ear, my good Andrè. How can you expect your poor wife to look happy and pleased when it is known all over St. Cloud that you are forever with Marie Colonne? There!"
"What—what!" cried Andrè; but Madame Margot was off, muttering and tittering as she walked rapidly home. Andrè was thunderstruck. The conversation between him and his young wife when he returned to the room was any thing but satisfactory. He wished to draw from her all she knew; but Julienne was cold and mysterious; and at length the husband became angry, or else feigned to do so, as she half-suspected, by way of a cloak for his misdeeds.
"It seems we did not know much of each other after all," said Andrè, ruefully one day. "After being together so many years too! Had any one told me that so shortly after our marriage my house would be filled with gloom and grief, I should have laughed finely, or taken offense."
"Oh, Andrè, Andrè, Andrè!" cried poor Julienne, laying her face upon his breast, while her tears flowed fast and thick—all the inward pride, which, though creditable to her heart, was capable of effecting so much misunderstanding, completely vanquished. "Why have there been secrets between us? Why have we sought to conceal any thing from each other? I am sure that our love is not dried up, and that there is something mysterious to each of us in the bitterness of these days! We have both had secrets: let me have what blame I may for mine—I can keep it no longer." And then, with some shame and humiliation, she recounted to Andrè the little history of her own feelings and doings—how at first she cared nothing whither he went, or what he did, satisfied that he was good, and that he loved her truly; how Madame Margot had paid her a visit, and had stimulated her curiosity by sarcasm and pity; how she came, after seeing an advertisement in the newspaper, to think of visiting the somnambule, more by way of a joke than any thing else; the revelations that were made to her, and the apparent confirmation they received from what Madame Margot afterward told her. She was in too much fear of making him angry to tell him before; but how could her little head be expected to see through all this, and how withstand the inevitable influences of such a trial?
Andrè was aghast. Trembling with excitement, and muttering imprecations against the clairvoyante and Madame Margot, he bade Julienne quickly prepare to accompany him to Paris. He got his horse and gig ready, and in a few minutes himself and his wife, the latter greatly agitated and alarmed, were proceeding at a rapid pace along the road to Paris. Andrè drove his good horse as he had never been driven before, and the five miles betwixt St. Cloud and the capital were quickly passed. The Rue St. Nicholas was presently gained, and the bell of the somnambule's apartment sharply rung. The old man appeared, looking sage and benevolent