in ominous silence.
Catastrophes lead intelligent and strong-minded men to be philosophical.
The Baron, morally, was at this moment like a man trying to find his
way by night through a forest. This gloomy taciturnity and the change in
that dejected countenance made Crevel very uneasy, for he did not wish
the death of his colleague.

"As I said, old fellow, we are now even; let us play for the odd. Will
you play off the tie by hook and by crook? Come!"

"Why," said Hulot, talking to himself--"why is it that out of ten pretty
women at least seven are false?"

But the Baron was too much upset to answer his own question. Beauty
is the greatest of human gifts for power. Every power that has no
counterpoise, no autocratic control, leads to abuses and folly.
Despotism is the madness of power; in women the despot is caprice.

"You have nothing to complain of, my good friend; you have a beautiful
wife, and she is virtuous."

"I deserve my fate," said Hulot. "I have undervalued my wife and
made her miserable, and she is an angel! Oh, my poor Adeline! you are
avenged! She suffers in solitude and silence, and she is worthy of my
love; I ought--for she is still charming, fair and girlish even--But was
there ever a woman known more base, more ignoble, more villainous than
this Valerie?"

"She is a good-for-nothing slut," said Crevel, "a hussy that deserves
whipping on the Place du Chatelet. But, my dear Canillac, though we are
such blades, so Marechal de Richelieu, Louis XV., Pompadour, Madame du
Barry, gay dogs, and everything that is most eighteenth century, there
is no longer a lieutenant of police."

"How can we make them love us?" Hulot wondered to himself without
heeding Crevel.

"It is sheer folly in us to expect to be loved, my dear fellow," said
Crevel. "We can only be endured; for Madame Marneffe is a hundred times
more profligate than Josepha."

"And avaricious! she costs me a hundred and ninety-two thousand francs a
year!" cried Hulot.

"And how many centimes!" sneered Crevel, with the insolence of a
financier who scorns so small a sum.

"You do not love her, that is very evident," said the Baron dolefully.

"I have had enough of her," replied Crevel, "for she has had more than
three hundred thousand francs of mine!"

"Where is it? Where does it all go?" said the Baron, clasping his head
in his hands.

"If we had come to an agreement, like the simple young men who combine
to maintain a twopenny baggage