He lost patience, became furious, and threatened her with his revolver.  He said one day before her to Madame Clarence: 

“I congratulate you, Madame; you have brought up your daughter to be a wanton hussy.”

“Take me away, Mamma,” exclaimed Eveline.  “I will get a divorce!”

He loved her more ardently than ever.  In his jealous rage, suspecting her, not without probability, of sending and receiving letters, he swore that he would intercept them, re-established a censorship over the post, threw private correspondence into confusion, delayed stock-exchange quotations, prevented assignations, brought about bankruptcies, thwarted passions, and caused suicides.  The independent press gave utterance to the complaints of the public and indignantly supported them.  To justify these arbitrary measures, the ministerial journals spoke darkly of plots and public dangers, and promoted a belief in a monarchical conspiracy.  The less well-informed sheets gave more precise information, told of the seizure of fifty thousand guns, and the landing of Prince Crucho.  Feeling grew throughout the country, and the republican organs called for the immediate meeting of Parliament.  Paul Visire returned to Paris, summoned his colleagues, held an important Cabinet Council, and proclaimed through his agencies that a plot had been actually formed against the national representation, but that the Prime Minister held the threads of it in his hand, and that a judicial inquiry was about to be opened.

He immediately ordered the arrest of thirty Socialists, and whilst the entire country was acclaiming him as its saviour, baffling the watchfulness of his six hundred detectives, he secretly took Eveline to a little house near the Northern railway station, where they remained until night.  After their departure, the maid of their hotel, as she was putting their room in order, saw seven little crosses traced by a hairpin on the wall at the head of the bed.

That is all that Hippolyte Ceres obtained as a reward of his efforts.

IX.  THE FINAL CONSEQUENCES

Jealousy is a virtue of democracies which preserves them from tyrants.  Deputies began to envy the Prime Minister his golden key.  For a year his domination over the beauteous Madame Ceres had been known to the whole universe.  The provinces, whither news and fashions only arrive after a complete revolution of the earth round the sun, were at last informed of the illegitimate loves of the Cabinet.  The provinces preserve an austere morality; women are more virtuous there than they are in the capital.