uchstone is applied to it, will not
be found of a mean and vulgar character? Come, come," she said, "this
is doubting and hesitation too much--to the proof," she said, looking
at the timepiece. "It is now seven o'clock," she said; "he must have
arrived; it is the hour for signing his papers." With a feverish
impatience she rose and walked towards the mirror, in which she smiled
with a resolute smile of devotedness; she touched the spring and drew
out the handle of the bell. Then, as if exhausted beforehand by the
struggle she had just undergone, she threw herself on her knees, in
utter abandonment, before a large couch, in which she buried her face in
her trembling hands. Ten minutes afterwards she heard the spring of the
door sound. The door moved upon invisible hinges, and Fouquet appeared.
He looked pale, and seemed bowed down by the weight of some bitter
reflection. He did not hurry, but simply came at the summons. The
preoccupation of his mind must indeed have been very great, that a
man, so devoted to pleasure, for whom indeed pleasure meant everything,
should obey such a summons so listlessly. The previous night, in fact,
fertile in melancholy ideas, had sharpened his features, generally so
noble in their indifference of expression, and had traced dark lines
of anxiety around his eyes. Handsome and noble he still was, and the
melancholy expression of his mouth, a rare expression with men, gave a
new character to his features, by which his youth seemed to be renewed.
Dressed in black, the lace in front of his chest much disarranged by
his feverishly restless hand, the looks of the superintendent, full of
dreamy reflection, were fixed upon the threshold of the room which
he had so frequently approached in search of expected happiness. This
gloomy gentleness of manner, this smiling sadness of expression, which
had replaced his former excessive joy, produced an indescribable effect
upon Madame de Belliere, who was regarding him at a distance.

A woman's eye can read the face of the man she loves, its every feeling
of pride, its every expression of suffering; it might almost be said
that Heaven has graciously granted to women, on account of their very
weakness, more than it has accorded to other creatures. They can conceal
their own feelings from a man, but from them no man can conceal his. The
marquise divined in a single glace the whole weight of the unhappiness
of the superintendent. She divined a night passed witho