At peace so long as Clementine was away, his trial was renewed
on the return of the happy household. As he sat at his window on this
memorable night, smoking his latakia in a pipe of wild-cherry wood
six feet long, given to him by Adam, these are the thoughts that were
passing through his mind:--

"I, and God, who will reward me for suffering in silence, alone know
how I love her! But how shall I manage to have neither her love nor her
dislike?"

And his thoughts travelled far on this strange theme.

It must not be supposed that Thaddeus was living without pleasure, in
the midst of his sufferings. The deceptions of this day, for instance,
were a source of inward joy to him. Since the return of the count and
countess he had daily felt ineffable satisfactions in knowing himself
necessary to a household which, without his devotion to its interests,
would infallibly have gone to ruin. What fortune can bear the strain of
reckless prodigality? Clementine, brought up by a spendthrift father,
knew nothing of the management of a household which the women of the
present day, however rich or noble they are, are often compelled to
undertake themselves. How few, in these days, keep a steward. Adam, on
the other hand, son of one of the great Polish lords who let themselves
be preyed on by the Jews, and are wholly incapable of managing even the
wreck of their vast fortunes (for fortunes are vast in Poland), was
not of a nature to check his own fancies or those of his wife. Left to
himself he would probably have been ruined before his marriage. Paz had
prevented him from gambling at the Bourse, and that says all.

Under these circumstances, Thaddeus, feeling that he loved Clementine
in spite of himself, had not the resource of leaving the house and
travelling in other lands to forget his passion. Gratitude, the key-note
of his life, held him bound to that household where he alone could look
after the affairs of the heedless owners. The long absence of Adam
and Clementine had given him peace. But the countess had returned
more lovely than ever, enjoying the freedom which marriage brings to a
Parisian woman, displaying the graces of a young wife and the nameless
attraction she gains from the happiness, or the independence, bestowed
upon her by a young man as trustful, as chivalric, and as much in
love as Adam. To know that he was the pivot on which the splendor the
household depended, to see Clementine when she got out of her carriag