Then Madame Desvarennes reflected.  The husband’s deserting his fireside would be salvation for herself.  The door by which he went out, would serve as an entrance for her.  The plan which she had conceived at Cernay that terrible night of the marriage when Jeanne had confided in her, remained for her to execute.  By opening her purse widely to the Prince, she would help him in his vice.  And she would infallibly succeed in separating Serge and Micheline.

But the mistress checked herself.  Lend her hands to the destruction of her son-in-law in a fit of fierce maternal egoism?  Was it not unworthy of her?  How many tears would the Prince’s errors cost her whom she wished to regain at all price?  And then would she always be there to compensate by her devoted affection the bitterly regretted estrangement from the husband?  She would, in dying, leave the household disunited.

She was horrified at what she had for an instant dreamed of doing.  And instead of helping the Prince on to destruction, she determined to do all in her power to keep him in the path of honor.  That resolution formed, Madame Desvarennes was satisfied.  She felt superior to Serge, and to a mind like hers the thought was strengthening.

The admission to the Grand Cercle gave Serge a powerful element of interest in life:  He had to manoeuvre to obtain his liberty.  His first evenings spent from home troubled Micheline deeply.  The young wife was jealous when she saw her husband going out.  She feared a rival, and trembled for her love.  Serge’s mysterious conduct caused her intolerable torture.  She dared not say anything to her mother, and remained perfectly quiet on the subject before her husband.  She sought discreetly, listened to the least word that might throw any light on the matter.

One day she found an ivory counter, bearing the stamp of the Grand Cercle, in her husband’s dressing-room.  It was in the Rue Royale then that her husband spent his evenings.  This discovery was a great relief to her.  It was not very wrong to go there, and if the Prince did go and smoke a few cigars and have a game at bouillotte, it was not a very great crime.  The return of his usual friends to Paris and the resumption of their receptions would bring him home again.

Serge now left Micheline about ten o’clock in the evening regularly and arrived at the club about eleven.  High play did not commence until after midnight.  Then he seated himself at the gaming-table with all the ardor of a professional gambler.  His face changed its expression.  When winning, it was animated with an expression of awful joy; when losing, he looked as hard as a stone, his features contracted, and his eyes were full of gloomy fire.  He bit his mustache convulsively.  Moreover, always silent, winning or losing with superb indifference.

He lost.  His bad luck had followed him.  At the club his losses were no longer limited.  There was always some one willing to take a hand, and until dawn he played, wasting his life and energies to satisfy his insane love of gambling.