In love with his wife before he married her, this passion had lasted through all the secret unhappiness of his marriage with a widow,—­a woman mistress of herself before as well as after her second marriage, and who used her liberty all the more freely because her husband treated her with the indulgence of a mother for a spoilt child.  His constant toil served him as shield and buckler against pangs of heart which he silenced with the care that diplomatists give to the keeping of secrets.  He knew, moreover, how ridiculous was jealousy in the eyes of a society that would never have believed in the conjugal passion of an old statesman.  How happened it that from the earliest days of his marriage his wife so fascinated him?  Why did he suffer without resistance?  How was it that he dared not resist?  Why did he let the years go by and still hope on?  By what means did this young and pretty and clever woman hold him in bondage?

The answer to all these questions would require a long history, which would injure our present tale.  Let us only remark here that the constant toil and grief of the count had unfortunately contributed not a little to deprive him of personal advantages very necessary to a man who attempts to struggle against dangerous comparisons.  In fact, the most cruel of the count’s secret sorrows was that of causing repugnance to his wife by a malady of the skin resulting solely from excessive labor.  Kind, and always considerate of the countess, he allowed her to be mistress of herself and her home.  She received all Paris; she went into the country; she returned from it precisely as though she were still a widow.  He took care of her fortune and supplied her luxury as a steward might have done.  The countess had the utmost respect for her husband.  She even admired his turn of mind; she knew how to make him happy by approbation; she could do what she pleased with him by simply going to his study and talking for an hour with him.  Like the great seigneurs of the olden time, the count protected his wife so loyally that a single word of disrespect said of her would have been to him an unpardonable injury.  The world admired him for this; and Madame de Serizy owed much to it.  Any other woman, even though she came of a family as distinguished as the Ronquerolles, might have found herself degraded in public opinion.  The countess was ungrateful, but she mingled a charm with her ingratitude.  From time to time she shed a balm upon the wounds of her husband’s heart.

Let us now explain the meaning of this sudden journey, and the incognito maintained by a minister of State.