It was a
logical downfall, which she could not stop, and the successive phases of
which she herself fatally precipitated. At the outset she had overlooked
his infidelity; then from a spirit of duty and to save him from
irreparable folly she had sought to retain him near her; and finally,
failing in her endeavor, she had begun to feel loathing and disgust. He
was now two-and-forty, he drank too much, he ate too much, he smoked too
much. He was growing corpulent and scant of breath, with hanging lips
and heavy eyelids; he no longer took care of his person as formerly, but
went about slipshod, and indulged in the coarsest pleasantries. But it
was more particularly away from his home that he sank into degradation,
indulging in the low debauchery which had ever attracted him. Every now
and again he disappeared from the house and slept elsewhere; then he
concocted such ridiculous falsehoods that he could not be believed,
or else did not take the trouble to lie at all. Constance, who felt
powerless to influence him, ended by allowing him complete freedom.

The worst was, that the dissolute life he led grievously affected the
business. He who had been such a great and energetic worker had lost
both mental and bodily vigor; he could no longer plan remunerative
strokes of business; he no longer had the strength to undertake
important contracts. He lingered in bed in the morning, and remained for
three or four days without once going round the works, letting disorder
and waste accumulate there, so that his once triumphal stock-takings
now year by year showed a falling-off. And what an end it was for that
egotist, that enjoyer, so gayly and noisily active, who had always
professed that money--capital increased tenfold by the labor of
others--was the only desirable source of power, and whom excess of money
and excess of enjoyment now cast with appropriate irony to slow ruin,
the final paralysis of the impotent.

But a supreme blow was to fall on Constance and fill her with horror of
her husband. Some anonymous letters, the low, treacherous revenge of
a dismissed servant, apprised her of Beauchene's former intrigue with
Norine, that work-girl who had given birth to a boy, spirited away
none knew whither. Though ten years had elapsed since that occurrence,
Constance could not think of it without a feeling of revolt. Whither had
that child been sent? Was he still alive? What ignominious existence
was he leading? She was vaguely jealou