“The wife is on my side; the husband can’t endure me; they are now quarrelling; and I shall get the better of it, for she does what she likes with that man.”

The lawyer was mistaken in one thing:  there was no dispute whatever, and Colleville was sleeping peacefully beside his dear little Flavie, while she was saying to herself:—­

“Certainly Theodose must be a superior man.”

Many men, like la Peyrade, derive their superiority from the audacity, or the difficulty, of an enterprise; the strength they display increases their muscular power, and they spend it freely.  Then when success is won, or defeat is met, the public is astonished to find how small, exhausted, and puny those men really are.  After casting into the minds of the two persons on whom Celeste’s fate chiefly depended, an interest and curiosity that were almost feverish, Theodose pretended to be a very busy man; for five or six days he was out of the house from morning till night, in order not to meet Flavie until the time when her interest should increase to the point of overstepping conventionality, and also in order to force the handsome Thuillier to come and fetch him.

The following Sunday he felt certain he should find Madame Colleville at church; he was not mistaken, for they came out, each of them, at the same moment, and met at the corner of the rue des Deux-Eglises.  Theodose offered his arm, which Flavie accepted, leaving her daughter to walk in front with her brother Anatole.  This youngest child, then about twelve years old, being destined for the seminary, was now at the Barniol institute, where he obtained an elementary education; Barniol, the son-in-law of the Phellions, was naturally making the tuition fees light, with a view to the hoped-for alliance between Felix and Celeste.

“Have you done me the honor and favor of thinking over what I said to you so badly the other day?” asked the lawyer, in a caressing tone, pressing the lady’s arm to his heart with a movement both soft and strong; for he seemed to wish to restrain himself and appear respectful, in spite of his evident eagerness.  “Do not misunderstand my intentions,” he continued, after receiving from Madame Colleville one of those looks which women trained to the management of passion know how to give,—­a look that, by mere expression, can convey both severe rebuke and secret community of sentiment.  “I love you as we love a noble nature struggling against misfortune; Christian charity enfolds both the strong and the weak; its treasure belongs to both.  Refined, graceful, elegant as you are, made to be an ornament of the highest society, what man could see you without feeling an immense compassion in his heart—­buried here among these odious bourgeois, who know nothing of you, not even the aristocratic value of a single one of your attitudes, or those enchanting inflections of your voice!  Ah! if I were only rich! if I had power! your husband, who is certainly a good fellow,