“Where can I see you? where can I speak with you?” he said.  “It is death to be forced to disguise my voice, my look, my heart, my love—­”

Moved by that tear Marie promised to drive daily in the Bois, unless the weather were extremely bad.  This promise gave Raoul more pleasure than he had found in Florine for the last five years.

“I have so many things to say to you!  I suffer from the silence to which we are condemned—­”

The countess looked at him eagerly without replying, and at that moment Madame d’Espard returned to the room.

“Why didn’t you answer de Marsay?” she said as she entered.

“We ought to respect the dead,” replied Raoul.  “Don’t you see that he is dying?  Rastignac is his nurse,—­hoping to be put in the will.”

The countess pretended to have other visits to pay, and left the house.

For this quarter of an hour Raoul had sacrificed important interests and most precious time.  Marie was perfectly ignorant of the life of such men, involved in complicated affairs and burdened with exacting toil.  Women of society are still under the influence of the traditions of the eighteenth century, in which all positions were definite and assured.  Few women know the harassments in the life of most men who in these days have a position to make and to maintain, a fame to reach, a fortune to consolidate.  Men of settled wealth and position can now be counted; old men alone have time to love; young men are rowing, like Nathan, the galleys of ambition.  Women are not yet resigned to this change of customs; they suppose the same leisure of which they have too much in those who have none; they cannot imagine other occupations, other ends in life than their own.  When a lover has vanquished the Lernean hydra in order to pay them a visit he has no merit in their eyes; they are only grateful to him for the pleasure he gives; they neither know nor care what it costs.  Raoul became aware as he returned from this visit how difficult it would be to hold the reins of a love-affair in society, the ten-horsed chariot of journalism, his dramas on the stage, and his generally involved affairs.

“The paper will be wretched to-night,” he thought, as he walked away.  “No article of mine, and only the second number, too!”

Madame Felix de Vandenesse drove three times to the Bois de Boulogne without finding Raoul; the third time she came back anxious and uneasy.  The fact was that Nathan did not choose to show himself in the Bois until he could go there as a prince of the press.  He employed a whole week in searching for horses, a phantom and a suitable tiger, and in convincing his partners of the necessity of saving time so precious to them, and therefore of charging his equipage to the costs of the journal.  His associates, Massol and du Tillet agreed to this so readily that he really believed them the best fellows in the world.  Without this help, however, life would have been simply impossible to Raoul; as it was, it became so irksome that many men, even those of the strongest constitutions, could not have borne it.  A violent and successful passion takes a great deal of space in an ordinary life; but when it is connected with a woman in the social position of Madame de Vandenesse it sucks the life out of a man as busy as Raoul.  Here is a list of the obligations his passion imposed upon him.