“Hortense has still an uncle.”

“What!  Old Fischer?  He is winding up his concerns, and that again is the Baron’s fault; his rake is dragged over every till within his reach.”

“Comte Hulot——­”

“Oh, madame, your husband has already made thin air of the old General’s savings.  He spent them in furnishing his singer’s rooms.  —­Now, come; am I to go without a hope?”

“Good-bye, monsieur.  A man easily gets over a passion for a woman of my age, and you will fall back on Christian principles.  God takes care of the wretched——­”

The Baroness rose to oblige the captain to retreat, and drove him back into the drawing-room.

“Ought the beautiful Madame Hulot to be living amid such squalor?” said he, and he pointed to an old lamp, a chandelier bereft of its gilding, the threadbare carpet, the very rags of wealth which made the large room, with its red, white, and gold, look like a corpse of Imperial festivities.

“Monsieur, virtue shines on it all.  I have no wish to owe a handsome abode to having made of the beauty you are pleased to ascribe to me a man-trap and a money-box for five-franc pieces!”

The captain bit his lips as he recognized the words he had used to vilify Josepha’s avarice.

“And for whom are you so magnanimous?” said he.  By this time the baroness had got her rejected admirer as far as the door.—­“For a libertine!” said he, with a lofty grimace of virtue and superior wealth.

“If you are right, my constancy has some merit, monsieur.  That is all.”

After bowing to the officer as a woman bows to dismiss an importune visitor, she turned away too quickly to see him once more fold his arms.  She unlocked the doors she had closed, and did not see the threatening gesture which was Crevel’s parting greeting.  She walked with a proud, defiant step, like a martyr to the Coliseum, but her strength was exhausted; she sank on the sofa in her blue room, as if she were ready to faint, and sat there with her eyes fixed on the tumble-down summer-house, where her daughter was gossiping with Cousin Betty.

From the first days of her married life to the present time the Baroness had loved her husband, as Josephine in the end had loved Napoleon, with an admiring, maternal, and cowardly devotion.  Though ignorant of the details given her by Crevel, she knew that for twenty years past Baron Hulot been anything rather than a faithful husband; but she had sealed her eyes with lead, she had wept in silence, and no word of reproach had ever escaped her.  In return for this angelic sweetness, she had won her husband’s veneration and something approaching to worship from all who were about her.

A wife’s affection for her husband and the respect she pays him are infectious in a family.  Hortense believed her father to be a perfect model of conjugal affection; as to their son, brought up to admire the Baron, whom everybody regarded as one of the giants who so effectually backed Napoleon, he knew that he owed his advancement to his father’s name, position, and credit; and besides, the impressions of childhood exert an enduring influence.  He still was afraid of his father; and if he had suspected the misdeeds revealed by Crevel, as he was too much overawed by him to find fault, he would have found excuses in the view every man takes of such matters.