have seen the sun in heaven. What was to
be done? What course should he take? What resolution should he make?
The man who can keep his head in such circumstances must be made of
the same stuff as the convict who spent the night in robbing the
Bibliotheque Royale of its gold medals, and repaired to his honest
brother in the morning with a request to melt down the plunder. "What
is to be done?" cried the brother. "Make me some coffee," replied the
thief. Victurnien sank into a bewildered stupor, darkness settled down
over his brain. Visions of past rapture flitted across the misty gloom
like the figures that Raphael painted against a black background; to
these he must bid farewell. Inexorable and disdainful, the Duchess
played with the tip of her scarf. She looked in irritation at
Victurnien from time to time; she coquetted with memories, she spoke
to her lover of his rivals as if anger had finally decided her to
prefer one of them to a man who could so change in one moment after
twenty-eight months of love.

"Ah! that charming young Felix de Vandenesse, so faithful as he was to
Mme. de Mortsauf, would never have permitted himself such a scene! He
can love, can de Vandenesse! De Marsay, that terrible de Marsay, such
a tiger as everyone thought him, was rough with other men; but like
all strong men, he kept his gentleness for women. Montriveau trampled
the Duchesse de Langeais under foot, as Othello killed Desdemona, in a
burst of fury which at any rate proved the extravagance of his love.
It was not like a paltry squabble. There was rapture in being so
crushed. Little, fair-haired, slim, and slender men loved to torment
women; they could only reign over poor, weak creatures; it pleased
them to have some ground for believing that they were men. The tyranny
of love was their one chance of asserting their power. She did not
know why she had put herself at the mercy of fair hair. Such men as de
Marsay, Montriveau, and Vandenesse, dark-haired and well grown, had a
ray of sunlight in their eyes."

It was a storm of epigrams. Her speeches, like bullets, came hissing
past his ears. Every word that Diane hurled at him was triple-barbed;
she humiliated, stung, and wounded him with an art that was all her
own, as half a score of savages can torture an enemy bound to a stake.

"You are mad!" he cried at last, at the end of his patience, and out
he went in God knows what mood. He drove as if he had never handled
the reins before, l