y through the house. Furthermore; greatly to the
astonishment of the marquise, her husband, who had so long been
indifferent to her beauty, seemed to remark afresh that she was too
charming to be despised; his words accordingly began little by little to
express an affection that had long since gradually disappeared from them.
The marquise had never ceased to love him; she had suffered the loss of
his love with resignation, she hailed its return with joy, and three
months elapsed that resembled those which had long ceased to be more to
the poor wife than a distant and half-worn-out memory.

Thus she had, with the supreme facility of youth, always ready to be
happy, taken up her gladness again, without even asking what genius had
brought back to her the treasure which she had thought lost, when she
received an invitation from a lady of the neighbourhood to spend some
days in her country house. Her husband and her two brothers-in-law,
invited with her, were of the party, and accompanied her. A great hunting
party had been arranged beforehand, and almost immediately upon arriving
everyone began to prepare for taking part in it.

The abbe, whose talents had made him indispensable in every company,
declared that for that day he was the marquise's cavalier, a title which
his sister-in-law, with her usual amiability, confirmed. Each of the
huntsmen, following this example, made choice of a lady to whom to
dedicate his attentions throughout the day; then, this chivalrous
arrangement being completed, all present directed their course towards
the place of meeting.

That happened which almost always happens the dogs hunted on their own
account. Two or three sportsmen only followed the dogs; the rest got
lost. The abbe, in his character of esquire to the marquise, had not
left her for a moment, and had managed so cleverly that he was alone with
her--an opportunity which he had been seeking for a month previously with
no less care--than the marquise had been using to avoid it. No sooner,
therefore, did the marquise believe herself aware that the abbe had
intentionally turned aside from the hunt than she attempted to gallop her
horse in the opposite direction from that which she had been following;
but the abbe stopped her. The marquise neither could nor would enter
upon a struggle; she resigned herself, therefore, to hearing what the
abbe had to say to her, and her face assumed that air of haughty disdain
which women so well