And burning with faith, he continued his supplication, and an ardent prayer escaped from his lips.  But someone touched him on the shoulder.  He lifted his eyes; it was M. Venot.  He was surprised to find him praying before that closed door.  Then as though God Himself had responded to his appeal, the count flung his arms round the little old gentleman’s neck.  At last he could weep, and he burst out sobbing and repeated: 

“My brother, my brother.”

All his suffering humanity found comfort in that cry.  He drenched M. Venot’s face with tears; he kissed him, uttering fragmentary ejaculations.

“Oh, my brother, how I am suffering!  You only are left me, my brother.  Take me away forever—­oh, for mercy’s sake, take me away!”

Then M. Venot pressed him to his bosom and called him “brother” also.  But he had a fresh blow in store for him.  Since yesterday he had been searching for him in order to inform him that the Countess Sabine, in a supreme fit of moral aberration, had but now taken flight with the manager of one of the departments in a large, fancy emporium.  It was a fearful scandal, and all Paris was already talking about it.  Seeing him under the influence of such religious exaltation, Venot felt the opportunity to be favorable and at once told him of the meanly tragic shipwreck of his house.  The count was not touched thereby.  His wife had gone?  That meant nothing to him; they would see what would happen later on.  And again he was seized with anguish, and gazing with a look of terror at the door, the walls, the ceiling, he continued pouring forth his single supplication: 

“Take me away!  I cannot bear it any longer!  Take me away!”

M. Venot took him away as though he had been a child.  From that day forth Muffat belonged to him entirely; he again became strictly attentive to the duties of religion; his life was utterly blasted.  He had resigned his position as chamberlain out of respect for the outraged modesty of the Tuileries, and soon Estelle, his daughter, brought an action against him for the recovery of a sum of sixty thousand francs, a legacy left her by an aunt to which she ought to have succeeded at the time of her marriage.  Ruined and living narrowly on the remains of his great fortune, he let himself be gradually devoured by the countess, who ate up the husks Nana had rejected.  Sabine was indeed ruined by the example of promiscuity set her by her husband’s intercourse with the wanton.  She was prone to every excess and proved the ultimate ruin and destruction of his very hearth.  After sundry adventures she had returned home, and he had taken her back in a spirit of Christian resignation and forgiveness.  She haunted him as his living disgrace, but he grew more and more indifferent and at last ceased suffering from these distresses.  Heaven took him out of his wife’s hands in order to restore him to the arms of God, and so the voluptuous pleasures he had enjoyed with Nana were prolonged