Days, weeks, months passed on, and the Count de Tremorel did not find life at Valfeuillu as dull as he had thought.  He insensibly slipped along the gentle slope of material well-being, which leads directly to brutishness.  A physical and moral torpor had succeeded the fever of the first days, free from disagreeable sensations, though wanting in excitement.  He ate and drank much, and slept twelve round hours.  The rest of the time, when he did not talk with Bertha, he wandered in the park, lounged in a rocking-chair, or took a jaunt in the saddle.  He even went fishing under the willows at the foot of the garden; and grew fat.  His best days were those which he spent at Corbeil with Jenny.  He found in her something of his past, and she always quarrelled with him, which woke him up.  Besides, she brought him the gossip of Paris and the small talk of the boulevards.  She came regularly every week, and her love for Hector, far from diminishing, seemed to grow with each interview.  The poor girl’s affairs were in a troubled condition.  She had bought her establishment at too high a price, and her partner at the end of the first month decamped, carrying off three thousand francs.  She knew nothing about the trade which she had undertaken, and she was robbed without mercy on all sides.  She said nothing of these troubles to Hector, but she intended to ask him to come to her assistance.  It was the least that he could do.

At first, the visitors to Valfeuillu were somewhat astonished at the constant presence there of a young man of leisure; but they got accustomed to him.  Hector assumed a melancholy expression of countenance, such as a man ought to have who had undergone unheard-of misfortunes, and whose life had failed of its promise.  He appeared inoffensive; people said: 

“The count has a charming simplicity.”

But sometimes, when alone, he had sudden and terrible relapses.  “This life cannot last,” thought he; and he was overcome with childish rage when he contrasted the past with the present.  How could he shake off this dull existence, and rid himself of these stiffly good people who surrounded him, these friends of Sauvresy?  Where should he take refuge?  He was not tempted to return to Paris; what could he do there?  His house had been sold to an old leather merchant; and he had no money except that which he borrowed of Sauvresy.  Yet Sauvresy, to Hector’s mind, was a most uncomfortable, wearisome, implacable friend; he did not understand half-way measures in desperate situations.

“Your boat is foundering,” he said to Hector; “let us begin by throwing all that is superfluous into the sea.  Let us keep nothing of the past; that is dead; we will bury it, and nothing shall recall it.  When your situation is relieved, we will see.”