f him
who was constantly in their thoughts?

In spite of Saniel's efforts and solicitations, supported by Nougarede's,
Florentin had embarked for New Caledonia, whence he wrote as often as he
could. His letters related all his sufferings in the terrible galleys,
where he was confined during the voyage, and since his arrival they were
a series of long complaints, continued from one to the other, like a
story without end, turning always on the same subject, his physical
sufferings, his humiliation, his discouragement, and his disgust in the
midst of the unfortunates whose companion he was.

The arrival of these letters filled the mother and sister with anguish
that lasted for several days; and this anguish, that neither of them
could dissimulate, angered Saniel.

"What would you do if he were dead?" he asked Phillis.

"Would it not be better for him?"

"But he will return."

"In what condition?"

"Are we the masters of fate?"

"We weep, we do not complain."

But he complained of the weeping faces that surrounded him, the tears
they concealed from him, the sighs they stifled. Ordinarily he was tender
and affectionate to his mother-in-law, with attention and deference which
in some ways seemed affected, as if he were so by will rather than by
natural sentiment; but at these times he forgot this tenderness, and
treated her with hardness so unjust, that more than once Madame Cormier
spoke of it to her daughter.

"How can your husband, who is so good to me, be so merciless regarding
Florentin? One would say that our sadness produces on him the effect of a
reproach that we would address to him."

One day when things had gone farther than usual, she had the courage to
speak to him plainly: "Forgive me for burdening you with the weariness of
our disgrace," she said to him. "When I complain of everything, of men
and things, you should remember that you are the exception, you who have
done everything to save him."

But these few words which she believed would calm the irritation of her
son-in-law, had on the contrary exasperated him; he left her, furious.

"I do not understand your husband at all," she said to her daughter.
"Will you not explain to me what the matter is with him?"

How could she give her mother the explanation that she could not give
herself? Having reached an unfathomable abyss, she dared not even lean
over to look into its depths; and instead of going on in the path where
she was pledged in spit