Adolphe.  Pardon me:  I was wrong, but the night was dreadful.

(They sit down.  Embarrassed silence follows.)

Henriette. [To Adolphe] Well, are you not going to congratulate
Maurice on his great success?

Adolphe.  Oh, yes!  Your success is the real thing, and envy itself cannot deny it.  Everything is giving way before you, and even I have a sense of my own smallness in your presence.

Maurice.  Nonsense!—­Henriette, are you not going to offer Adolphe a glass of wine?

Adolphe.  Thank you, not for me—­nothing at all!

Henriette. [To Adolphe] What’s the matter with you?  Are you ill?

Adolphe.  Not yet, but—­

Henriette.  Your eyes—­

Adolphe.  What of them?

Maurice.  What happened at the Cremerie last night?  I suppose they are angry with me?

Adolphe.  Nobody is angry with you, but your absence caused a depression which it hurt me to watch.  But nobody was angry with you, believe me.  Your friends understood, and they regarded your failure to come with sympathetic forbearance.  Madame Catherine herself defended you and proposed your health.  We all rejoiced in your success as if it had been our own.

Henriette.  Well, those are nice people!  What good friends you have, Maurice.

Maurice.  Yes, better than I deserve.

Adolphe.  Nobody has better friends than he deserves, and you are a man greatly blessed in his friends—­Can’t you feel how the air is softened to-day by all the kind thoughts and wishes that stream toward you from a thousand breasts?

(Maurice rises in order to hide his emotion.)

Adolphe.  From a thousand breasts that you have rid of the nightmare that had been crushing them during a lifetime.  Humanity had been slandered—­and you have exonerated it:  that’s why men feel grateful toward you.  To-day they are once more holding their heads high and saying:  You see, we are a little better than our reputation after all.  And that thought makes them better.

(Henriette tries to hide her emotion.)

Adolphe.  Am I in the way?  Just let me warm myself a little in your sunshine, Maurice, and then I’ll go.

Maurice.  Why should you go when you have only just arrived?

Adolphe.  Why?  Because I have seen what I need not have seen; because I know now that my hour is past. [Pause] That you sent for me, I take as an expression of thoughtfulness, a notice of what has happened, a frankness that hurts less than deceit.  You hear that I think well of my fellow-beings, and this I have learned from you, Maurice. [Pause] But, my friend, a few moments ago I passed through the Church of St. Germain, and there I saw a woman and a child.  I am not wishing that you had seen them, for what has happened cannot be altered, but if you gave a thought or a word to them before you set them adrift on the waters of the great city, then you could enjoy your happiness undisturbed.  And now I bid you good-by.