Poissy, in the municipal department; or else as manufacturer of
musical instruments--"

"Any one of them would suit me."

"Well, then! if that queer barrister has power, and he certainly has
plenty of intrigue, let us manage him. I'll sound him; leave me to do
the thing--and, above all, don't thwart his game at the Thuilliers'."

Theodose had laid a finger on a sore sport in Flavie Colleville's
heart; and this requires an explanation, which may, perhaps, have the
value of a synthetic glance at women's life.

At forty years of age a woman, above all, if she has tasted the
poisoned apple of passion, undergoes a solemn shock; she sees two
deaths before her: that of the body and that of the heart. Dividing
women into two great categories which respond to the common ideas, and
calling them either virtuous or guilty, it is allowable to say that
after that fatal period they both suffer pangs of terrible intensity.
If virtuous, and disappointed in the deepest hopes of their nature
--whether they have had the courage to submit, whether they have
buried their revolt in their hearts or at the foot of the altar--they
never admit to themselves that all is over for them without horror.
That thought has such strange and diabolical depths that in it lies
the reason of some of those apostasies which have, at times, amazed
the world and horrified it. If guilty, women of that age fall into one
of several delirious conditions which often turn, alas! to madness, or
end in suicide, or terminate in some with passion greater than the
situation itself.