A  like  hypnotism  emanated  for  Mathilde  from  these
pieces  of  furniture  and  these  bibelots,  wreckage  from  her
previous  existence  —  an  existence  still  so  recent  that  the
fall  from  this  Olympus  of  sumptuous  things  was  like  a
dream  to  her.  The  mirage  of  former  opulence,  that
mental  malady  common  to  those  who  have  lost  a  for-
tune, acted  upon  her,  unconsciously  to  herself.  It  was
to  become,  without  her  suspecting  it,  the  ruling  idea  of
all  her  thoughts  and  acts,  and  would  lead  her  by  degrees
to  produce  a  copy,  a  parody  rather,  of  the  life  that  would
have  been  hers  without  the  paternal  downfall.  The
earliest  satisfactions  accorded  to  this  nostalgia  of  the
past  took  the  form  of  little  domestic  expenses,  which,
taken  together,  represented  two  or  three  hundred  dollars
more  for  Hector  to  earn.  But,  almost  immediately,  the
occasion  offered  for  nearly  doubling  his  income;  an  illus-
trated journal  offered  him  twenty  dollars  a  week  for  a
chronique  to  be  signed  with  a  pseudonym.  He  took  —
0  irony !  —  the  name  Clavaroche.
