pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his own death, is
regarded simply as a means to the one end.

A younger man would have said to himself, "I should very much
like to have the Duchess for my mistress!" or, "If the Duchesse
de Langeais cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!"
But the General said, "I will have Mme de Langeais for my
mistress." And if a man takes such an idea into his head when
his heart has never been touched before, and love begins to be a
kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a hell he has
set his foot.

Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the
first hot fever-fit of the first love that he had known. When a
man has kept all his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and
impetuosity into middle age, his first impulse is, as it were, to
stretch out a hand to take the thing that he desires; a little
later he realizes that there is a gulf set between them, and that
it is all but impossible to cross it. A sort of childish
impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more, and trembles
or cries. Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest
reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau
discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his
bondage made the heavier by his love.

The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had
become a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to be his
world, his life, from this time forth. The greatest joy, the
keenest anguish, that he had yet known grew colorless before the
bare recollection of the least sensation stirred in him by her.