Sulpice, whose feelings were overcome by this great popular consecration, felt a kind of anger stir his heart against this solicitor, who, in the triumph of a great popular cause, saw only a means of self-advancement, of securing an appointment.  The deputy—­for he was a deputy now, each commune adding its total to the Vaudrey vote—­was moved by a feeling of disgust.

The crowd followed him home that evening, shouting in triumph.

Amid the joy of victory, Sulpice felt the burden of the anxiety caused by duties to be done:  a treaty of peace to be signed, and what a peace!  Must he, alas! append his signature to a document devoted to the dismemberment of his country?  Far into the night he stood in reverie in his chamber, his brow resting against the cold window-pane.

He retired to rest very late, and arose with the gray dawn of February, but without having slept.

He looked across the street to a convent garden, with its square and lozenge-shaped beds regularly arranged, its bare trees and box-wood borders, that he had often gazed upon.  Some nuns in their black robes passed slowly across this cold and calm horizon that for many years had also been the range of his vision.

Henceforth this familiar spot, this sad garden, whose cloistral associations charmed him, would be lost to his view.  It was Paris now that awaited him, feverish Paris, burning with anger and odorous of saltpetre.  Its very pavements must burn.  Sulpice was in haste, however, to see it once more, to pass with head aloft beneath the garrets where he had once dreamed as a student, fagging and striving to get knowledge.  How often he would regret that convent garden, those familiar flower-beds, the deep silence that enveloped him as he sat working by the open window, the passage of a bird near him, as if to fan him with its wing, and the vague murmur of the canticles of the sisters ascending to his window like the echo of a prayer!

In the recess during one of the years following his election to the Assembly, he married Mademoiselle Gerard.  Doctor Reboux, her guardian, charmed to give his ward to a man with a future like Vaudrey’s, had not hesitated long about consenting to the marriage.  Adrienne delighted Sulpice, and the young girl herself was quite happy to be chosen by this good-natured, distinguished young man whom everybody at Grenoble, not excepting his political adversaries, admired and spoke well of.  With large, brilliant, black eyes lighting up a thin, fair face, a full beard, a high forehead with a deep furrow between the eyebrows, giving to his usually wandering, keen and restless glance a somewhat contemplative expression, Sulpice was a decidedly attractive man.  He was not a handsome or a charming fellow, but a good-natured, agreeable, refined man, a fine conversationalist, persuasive, enthusiastic and alert; learned without being pedantic, a man who could inspire in a young girl a perfect passion.  Adrienne joyfully married him, as he had sought her from love.