more likely, since Constance could never more have an heir to bar the road of conquest.  Without penetrating her singular feelings, Mathieu fancied that she perhaps wished to sound him to ascertain if he were not behind Blaise, urging on the work of spoliation.  She possibly imagined that her request would make him anxious, and that he would refuse to make the necessary researches.  At this idea he decided to do as she desired, if only to show her that he was above all the base calculations of ambition.

“I am at your disposal, cousin,” said he.  “It is enough for me that this inquiry may give you a little relief.  But if the lad is alive, am I to bring him to you?”

“Oh! no, no, I do not ask that!” And then, gesticulating almost wildly, she stammered:  “I don’t know what I want, but I suffer so dreadfully that I am scarce able to live!”

In point of fact a tempest raged within her, but she really had no settled plan.  One could hardly say that she really thought of that boy as a possible heir.  In spite of her hatred of all conquerors from without, was it likely that she would accept him as a conqueror, in the face of her outraged womanly feelings and her bourgeois horror of illegitimacy?  And yet if he were not her son, he was at least her husband’s.  And perhaps an idea of saving her empire by placing the works in the hands of that heir was dimly rising within her, above all her prejudices and her rancor.  But however that might be, her feelings for the time remained confused, and the only clear thing was her desperate torment at being now and forever childless, a torment which goaded her on to seek another’s child with the wild idea of making that child in some slight degree her own.

Mathieu, however, asked her, “Am I to inform Beauchene of the steps I take?”

“Do you as you please,” she answered.  “Still, that would be the best.”

That same evening there came a complete rupture between herself and her husband.  She threw in Beauchene’s face all the contempt and loathing that she had felt for him for years.  Hopeless as she was, she revenged herself by telling him everything that she had on her heart and mind.  And her slim dark figure, upborne by bitter rage, assumed such redoubtable proportions in his eyes that he felt frightened by her and fled.  Henceforth they were husband and wife in name only.  It was logic on the march, it was the inevitable disorganization of a household reaching its climax, it was rebellion against nature’s law and indulgence in vice leading to the gradual decline of a man of intelligence, it was a hard worker sinking into the sloth of so-called pleasure; and then, death having snatched away the only son, the home broke to pieces—­the wife—­fated to childlessness, and the husband driven away by her, rolling through debauchery towards final ruin.