the poetry of their youth. It was
doubtless a great grief to revisit again, with tearful eyes and wounded
hearts and heads bowed by the storms of life, the familiar paths where
they once knew happiness and peace. But, nevertheless, all these dear
confidants of past joys, of blasted hopes, of vanished dreams--if they
are mournful witnesses they are also friends. We love them; and they seem
to love us. Thus these two poor women, straying amid these woods, these
waters, these solitudes, bearing with them their incurable wounds,
fancied they heard voices which pitied them and breathed a healing
sympathy. The most cruel trial reserved to Madame de Camors in the life
which she had the courage and judgment to adopt, was assuredly the duty
of again seeing the Marquise de Campvallon, and preserving with her such
relations as might blind the eyes of the General and of the world.

She resigned herself even to this; but she desired to defer as long as
possible the pain of such a meeting. Her health supplied her with a
natural excuse for not going, during that summer, to Campvallon, and also
for keeping herself confined to her own room the day the Marquise visited
Reuilly, accompanied by the General.

Madame de Tecle received her with her usual kindness. Madame de
Campvallon, whom M. de Camors had already warned, did not trouble herself
much; for the best women, like the worst, excel in comedy, and everything
passed off without the General having conceived the shadow of a
suspicion.

The fine season had passed. M. de Camors had visited the country several
times, strengthening at every interview the new tone of his relations
with his wife. He remained at Reuilly, as was his custom, during the
month of August; and under the pretext of the health of the Countess, did
not multiply his visits that year to Campvallon. On his return to Paris,
he resumed his old habits, and also his careless egotism, for he
recovered little by little from the blow he had received. He began to
forget his sufferings and those of his wife; and even to felicitate
himself secretly on the turn that chance had given to her situation. He
had obtained the advantage and had no longer any annoyance. His wife had
been enlightened, and he no longer deceived her--which was a comfortable
thing for him. As for her, she would soon be a mother, she would have a
plaything, a consolation; and he designed redoubling his attentions and
regards to her.

She would be happy, or