At last, he was about to take his departure for Nogent, when he got a
letter from Deslauriers. Two fresh candidates had offered themselves,
the one a Conservative, the other a Red; a third, whatever he might be,
would have no chance. It was all Frederick's fault; he had let the lucky
moment pass by; he should have come sooner and stirred himself.

"You have not even been seen at the agricultural assembly!" The advocate
blamed him for not having any newspaper connection.

"Ah! if you had followed my advice long ago! If we had only a public
print of our own!"

He laid special stress on this point. However, many persons who would
have voted for him out of consideration for M. Dambreuse, abandoned him
now. Deslauriers was one of the number. Not having anything more to
expect from the capitalist, he had thrown over his _protege_.

Frederick took the letter to show it to Madame Dambreuse.

"You have not been to Nogent, then?" said she.

"Why do you ask?"

"Because I saw Deslauriers three days ago."

Having learned that her husband was dead, the advocate had come to make
a report about the coal-mines, and to offer his services to her as a man
of business. This seemed strange to Frederick; and what was his friend
doing down there?

Madame Dambreuse wanted to know how he had spent his time since they had
parted.

"I have been ill," he replied.

"You ought at least to have told me about it."

"Oh! it wasn't worth while;" besides, he had to settle a heap of things,
to keep appointments and to pay visits.

From that time forth he led a double life, sleeping religiously at the
Marechale's abode and passing the afternoon with Madame Dambreuse, so
that there was scarcely a single hour of freedom left to him in the
middle of the day.

The infant was in the country at Andilly. They went to see it once a
week.

The wet-nurse's house was on rising ground in the village, at the end of
a little yard as dark as a pit, with straw on the ground, hens here and
there, and a vegetable-cart under the shed.

Rosanette would begin by frantically kissing her baby, and, seized with
a kind of delirium, would keep moving to and fro, trying to milk the
she-goat, eating big pieces of bread, and inhaling the odour of manure;
she even wanted to put a little of it into her handkerchief.

Then they took long walks, in the course of which she went into the
nurseries, tore off branches from the lilac-trees which hung down over
the walls