after the manner of the Arabs among whom he had lived;
for among them a vow is a kind of contract made with Destiny a man's
whole future is solemnly pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his
own death, is regarded simply as a means to the one end.

A younger man would have said to himself, "I should very much like to
have the Duchess for my mistress!" or, "If the Duchesse de Langeais
cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!" But the General said,
"I will have Mme de Langeais for my mistress." And if a man takes such
an idea into his head when his heart has never been touched before, and
love begins to be a kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a
hell he has set his foot.

Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the first hot
fever-fit of the first love that he had known. When a man has kept all
his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and impetuosity into middle
age, his first impulse is, as it were, to stretch out a hand to take the
thing that he desires; a little later he realizes that there is a gulf
set between them, and that it is all but impossible to cross it. A sort
of childish impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more,
and trembles or cries. Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest
reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau
discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his bondage
made the heavier by his love.

The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had become
a most sacred and dreadful power. She was to be his world, his life,
from this time forth. The greatest joy, the keenest anguish, that he
had yet known grew colorless before the bare recollection of the least
sensation stirred in him by her. The swiftest revolutions in a man's
outward life only touch his interests, while passion brings a complete
revulsion of feeling. And so in those who live by feeling, rather than
by self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine
rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete
revolution. In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de Montriveau
wiped out his whole past life.

A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, "Shall I go, or shall I
not?" and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de Langeais
towards eight o'clock that evening, and was admitted. He was to see the
woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had seen yesterday, among
lights, a fresh inn