Madame de l’Estorade is seen to be far from one of those impassible natures which resist all affectionate emotions except those of the family.  With a beauty that was partly Spanish, she had eyes which her friend Louise de Chaulieu declared could ripen peaches.  Her coldness was not what physicians call congenital; her temperament was an acquired one.  Marrying from reason a man whose mental insufficiency is very apparent, she made herself love him out of pity and a sense of protection.  Up to the present time, by means of a certain atrophy of heart, she had succeeded, without one failure, in making Monsieur de l’Estorade perfectly happy.  With the same instinct, she had exaggerated the maternal sentiment to an almost inconceivable degree, until in that way she had fairly stifled all the other cravings of her nature.  It must be said, however, that the success she had had in accomplishing this hard task was due in a great measure to the circumstance of Louise de Chaulieu.  To her that dear mistaken one was like the drunken slave whom the Spartans made a living lesson to their children; and between the two friends a sort of tacit wager was established.  Louise having taken the side of romantic passion, Renee held firmly to that of superior reason; and in order to win the game, she had maintained a courage of good sense and wisdom which might have cost her far more to practise without this incentive.  At the age she had now reached, and with her long habit of self-control, we can understand how, seeing, as she believed, the approach of a love against which she had preached so vehemently, she should instantly set to work to rebuff it; but a man who did not feel that love, while thinking her ideally beautiful, and who possibly loved elsewhere,—­a man who had saved her child from death and asked no recompense, who was grave, serious, and preoccupied in an absorbing enterprise,—­why should she still continue to think such a man dangerous?  Why not grant to him, without further hesitation, the lukewarm sentiment of friendship?

VI

CURIOSITY THAT CAME WITHIN AN ACE OF BEING FATAL

On returning to Ville d’Avray, Sallenauve was confronted by a singular event.  Who does not know how sudden events upset the whole course of our lives, and place us, without our will, in compromising positions?

Sallenauve was not mistaken in feeling serious anxiety as to the mental state of his friend Marie-Gaston.

When that unfortunate man had left the scene of his cruel loss immediately after the death of his wife, he would have done a wiser thing had he then resolved never to revisit it.  Nature, providentially ordered, provides that if those whose nearest and dearest are struck by the hand of death accept the decree with the resignation which ought to follow the execution of all necessary law, they will not remain too long under the influence of their grief.  Rousseau has said, in his famous letter against suicide:  “Sadness, weariness of spirit, regret, despair are not lasting sorrows, rooted forever in the soul; experience will always cast out that feeling of bitterness which makes us at first believe our grief eternal.”