work
of their reveries, the legend of their infancy, the poetry of their
youth. It was doubtless a great grief to revisit again, with tearful
eyes and wounded hearts and heads bowed by the storms of life,
the familiar paths where they once knew happiness and peace. But,
nevertheless, all these dear confidants of past joys, of blasted
hopes, of vanished dreams--if they are mournful witnesses they are also
friends. We love them; and they seem to love us. Thus these two poor
women, straying amid these woods, these waters, these solitudes, bearing
with them their incurable wounds, fancied they heard voices which pitied
them and breathed a healing sympathy. The most cruel trial reserved to
Madame de Camors in the life which she had the courage and judgment
to adopt, was assuredly the duty of again seeing the Marquise de
Campvallon, and preserving with her such relations as might blind the
eyes of the General and of the world.

She resigned herself even to this; but she desired to defer as long
as possible the pain of such a meeting. Her health supplied her with
a natural excuse for not going, during that summer, to Campvallon, and
also for keeping herself confined to her own room the day the Marquise
visited Reuilly, accompanied by the General.

Madame de Tecle received her with her usual kindness. Madame de
Campvallon, whom M. de Camors had already warned, did not trouble
herself much; for the best women, like the worst, excel in comedy, and
everything passed off without the General having conceived the shadow of
a suspicion.

The fine season had passed. M. de Camors had visited the country several
times, strengthening at every interview the new tone of his relations
with his wife. He remained at Reuilly, as was his custom, during the
month of August; and under the pretext of the health of the Countess,
did not multiply his visits that year to Campvallon. On his return to
Paris, he resumed his old habits, and also his careless egotism, for he
recovered little by little from the blow he had received. He began to
forget his sufferings and those of his wife; and even to felicitate
himself secretly on the turn that chance had given to her situation. He
had obtained the advantage and had no longer any annoyance. His wife had
been enlightened, and he no longer deceived her--which was a comfortable
thing for him. As for her, she would soon be a mother, she would have a
plaything, a consolation; and he designed redoubling his at