were hidden behind muffs when she spoke of those
nocturnal sessions of the Chamber, which were only nights passed in
Marianne's bed! How those Parisians must have laughed at her and
ridiculed the credulity of the woman who believes herself loved, but who
is deceived and mocked at! Madame Gerson, Sabine! How overjoyed they
must have been when, in their salons, they referred to the little,
stupid Provincial who was ignorant of these tricks!

She felt ridiculed and tortured, more tortured than baffled, for her
vanity was nothing in comparison with her love, her poor, artless and
trusting love!

"Sulpice, I should never have believed--Never!--"

Why had they left Grenoble, their little house on the banks of the
Isere? They loved each other there, it was Paris that had snatched him
away! Paris! She hated it now. She hated that reputation that had
carried Vaudrey into office, the politics that had robbed her of a kind
and loving husband,--for he had loved her, she was sure of that,--and
which had made him the lover of a courtesan, the liar and coward that he
was!

"Do you see?" she said to Lissac suddenly. "I detest these walls!"

She pointed to the gilded ceilings with an angry gesture.

"Since I entered here, my life has come to a close!--It is that, that
which has taken him from me!--Ah! this society, this politics, these
meannesses, this life exposed to every one and everything, to temptation
and to fall, I am entirely sick of, I am disgusted with. Let me be
snatched from it, let me be taken away! Everywhere here, one might say,
there is an atmosphere of lying!"

"Do you hear? She laughs, she is happy! She! And I, ah! I!"

She had risen to her feet, suddenly recovering all her energy, as if
stirred by the air of a Hungarian dance, whose strains dimly reached
them from the distant, warm salons, where Marianne was disporting her
beauty--

"Ah! I hate this hotel, the noise and the women!" said Adrienne. "This
horde ranged about the buffet, this salon turned into a restaurant, the
false salutations, the commonplace protestations,--this society, all
this society, I detest it!--I will have no more of it!--It seems to me
that it all is mocking me, and that its smiles are only for that
courtesan!--But if I had driven her out?--Who brought her?"

"Her uncle and Monsieur de Rosas!"

"Monsieur de Rosas?"

"Who marries her!"

Adrienne nervously uttered a loud, harsh laugh, as painful as if it were
caused by a spasm.