sociate with, recognize, or even bow to the
offender. The Templars found in this secret society many advantages. It
was a great security in their intercourse with one another, and in the
different circumstances of daily life, where they met continually either
at the opera, in salons, or on the turf.

Camors was an exception among his companions and rivals in Parisian
life by the systematic decision of his doctrine. It was not so much an
embodiment of absolute scepticism and practical materialism; but the
want of a moral law is so natural to man, and obedience to higher laws
so sweet to him, that the chosen adepts to whom the project of Camors
was submitted accepted it with enthusiasm. They were happy in being able
to substitute a sort of positive and formal religion for restraints so
limited as their own confused and floating notions of honor. For Camors
himself, as is easily understood, it was a new barrier which he wished
to erect between himself and the passion which fascinated him. He
attached himself to this with redoubled force, as the only moral bond
yet left him. He completed his work by making the General accept the
title of President of the Association. The General, to whom Honor was a
sort of mysterious but real goddess, was delighted to preside over the
worship of his idol. He felt flattered by his young friend's selection,
and esteemed him the more.

It was the middle of winter. The Marquise Campvallon had resumed for
some time her usual course of life, which was at the same time strict
but elegant. Punctual at church every morning, at the Bois and at
charity bazaars during the day, at the opera or the theatres in the
evening, she had received M. de Camors without the shadow of apparent
emotion. She even treated him more simply and more naturally than ever,
with no recurrence to the past, no allusion to the scene in the park
during the storm; as if she had, on that day, disclosed everything
that had lain hidden in her heart. This conduct so much resembled
indifference, that Camors should have been delighted; but he was not--on
the contrary he was annoyed by it. A cruel but powerful interest,
already too dear to his blase soul, was disappearing thus from his life.
He was inclined to believe that Madame de Campvallon possessed a much
less complicated character than he had fancied; and that little by
little absorbed in daily trifles, she had become in reality what she
pretended to be--a good woman, inoffensiv