, rising
after every blow, like a lion wounded, but unconquered. In trampling
under his feet all moral belief which binds the vulgar, he had reserved
honor as an inviolable limit. Then, under the empire of his passions,
he said to himself that, after all, honor, like all the rest, was
conventional. Then he encountered crime--he touched it with his
hand--horror seized him--and he recoiled. He rejected with disgust the
principle which had conducted him there--asked himself what would become
of human society if it had no other.

The simple truths which he had misunderstood now appeared to him in
their tranquil splendor. He could not yet distinguish them clearly; he
did not try to give them a name, but he plunged with a secret delight
into their shadows and their peace. He sought them in the pure heart of
his child, in the pure love of his young wife, in the daily miracles
of nature, in the harmonies of the heavens, and probably already in the
depths of his thoughts--in God. In the midst of this approach toward a
new life he hesitated. Madame de Campvallon was there. He still loved
her vaguely. Above all, he could not abandon her without being guilty of
a kind of baseness. Terrible struggles agitated him. Having done so much
evil, would he now be permitted to do good, and gracefully partake of
the joys he foresaw? These ties with the past, his fortune dishonestly
acquired, his fatal mistress--the spectre of that old man would they
permit it?

And we may add, would Providence suffer it? Not that we should lightly
use this word Providence, and suspend over M. de Camors a menace of
supernatural chastisement. Providence does not intervene in human events
except through the logic of her eternal laws. She has only the sanction
of these laws; and it is for this reason she is feared. At the end of
August M. de Camors repaired to the principal town in the district, to
perform his duties in the Council-General. The session finished, he
paid a visit to Madame de Campvallon before returning to Reuilly. He had
neglected her a little in the course of the summer, and had only visited
Campvallon at long intervals, as politeness compelled him. The Marquise
wished to keep him for dinner, as she had no guests with her. She
pressed him so warmly that, reproaching himself all the time, he
consented. He never saw her without pain. She always brought back to him
those terrible memories, but also that terrible intoxication. She had
never been mo