she went thus. If, just before, he had exaggerated the expression of his
feelings in saying, in thinking rather, that he had never ceased loving
her, it was true that amid all his errors he had maintained for her an
affection composed particularly of gratitude, remorse, esteem and, it
must be said, of selfishness.

He loved for the devotion of which he was absolutely sure, and then, like
many husbands who deceive an irreproachable wife, he was proud of her,
while unfaithful to her. She seemed to him at once the dignity and the
charity of his life. She had remained in his eyes the one to whom he
could always return, the assured friend of moments of trial, the haven
after the tempest, the moral peace when he was weary of the troubles of
passion. What life would he lead when she was gone? For she would go!
Her resolution was irrevocable. All dropped from his side at once.
The mistress, to whom he had sacrificed the noblest and most loving
heart, he had lost under circumstances as abject as their two years of
passion had been dishonorable. His wife was about to leave him,
and would he succeed in keeping his son? He had returned to be avenged,
and he had not even succeeded in meeting his rival. That being so
impressionable had experienced, in the face of so many repeated blows,
a disappointment so absolute that he gladly looked forward to the
prospect of exposing himself to death on the following day, while at the
same time a bitter flood of rancor possessed him at the thought of all
the persons concerned in his adventure. He would have liked to crush
Madame Steno and Maitland, Lydia and Florent--Dorsenne, too--for having
given him the false word of honor, which had strengthened still more his
thirst for vengeance by calming it for a few hours.

His confusion of thoughts was only greater when he was seated alone with
his son at dinner. That morning he had seen before him his wife's