and timorous desires, they felt the imperative necessity of closing
their eyes, and of dreaming of a future full of amorous felicity and
peaceful enjoyment. The more they trembled one before the other, the
better they foresaw the horror of the abyss to the bottom of which
they were about to plunge, and the more they sought to make promises
of happiness to themselves, and to spread out before their eyes the
invincible facts that fatally led them to marriage.

Therese desired her union with Laurent solely because she was afraid
and wanted a companion. She was a prey to nervous attacks that drove her
half crazy. In reality she reasoned but little, she flung herself into
love with a mind upset by the novels she had recently been reading,
and a frame irritated by the cruel insomnia that had kept her awake for
several weeks.

Laurent, who was of a stouter constitution, while giving way to his
terror and his desire, had made up his mind to reason out his decision.
To thoroughly prove to himself that his marriage was necessary, that
he was at last going to be perfectly happy, and to drive away the vague
fears that beset him, he resumed all his former calculations.

His father, the peasant of Jeufosse, seemed determined not to die, and
Laurent said to himself that he might have to wait a long time for the
inheritance. He even feared that this inheritance might escape him, and
go into the pockets of one of his cousins, a great big fellow who turned
the soil over to the keen satisfaction of the old boy. And he would
remain poor; he would live the life of a bachelor in a garret, with a
bad bed and a worse table. Besides, he did not contemplate working all
his life; already he began to find his office singularly tedious. The
light labour entrusted to him became irksome owing to his laziness.