at was only relieved superficially by an extravagant
devotion to religious exercises.

It was in 1875, when the disillusionment of Mme. Fenayrou was complete,
that her husband received into his shop a pupil, a youth of twenty-one,
Louis Aubert. He was the son of a Norman tradesman. The ambitious father
had wished his son to enter the church, but the son preferred to be a
chemist. He was a shrewd, hard-working fellow, with an eye to the main
chance and a taste for pleasures that cost him nothing, jovial, but
vulgar and self-satisfied, the kind of man who, having enjoyed the
favours of woman, treats her with arrogance and contempt, till from
loving she comes to loathe him--a characteristic example, according
to M. Bourget, of le faux homme a femmes. Such was Aubert, Fenayrou's
pupil. He was soon to become something more than pupil.

Fenayrou as chemist had not answered to the expectations of his
mother-in-law. His innate laziness and love of coarse pleasures had
asserted themselves. At first his wife had shared in the enjoyments, but
as time went on and after the birth of their two children, things became
less prosperous. She was left at home while Fenayrou spent his time
in drinking bocks of beer, betting and attending race-meetings. It was
necessary, under these circumstances, that someone should attend to
the business of the shop. In Aubert Fenayrou found a ready and willing
assistant.

From 1876 to 1880, save for an occasional absence for military service,
Aubert lived with the Fenayrous, managing the business and making love
to the bored and neglected wife, who after a few months became his
mistress. Did Fenayrou know of this intrigue or not? That is a crucial
question in the case. If he did not, it was not for want of warning from
certain of his friends and neighbours, to whom the intrigue was a matter
of common knowledge. Did he refuse to believe in his wife's guilt? or,
dependent as he was for his living on the exertions of his assistant,
did he deliberately ignore it, relying on his wife's attractions to
keep the assiduous Aubert at work in the shop? In any case Aubert's
arrogance, which had increased with the consciousness of his importance
to the husband and his conquest of the wife, led in August of 1880, to
a rupture. Aubert left the Fenayrous and bought a business of his own on
the Boulevard Malesherbes.

Before his departure Aubert had tried to persuade Mme. Gibon to sell up
her son-in-law by claiming f