He sighed: 

“Ah, if the people only knew the little that we can do when we are powerful!”

He told her his impressions.  Berthier was reserved.  The others were impenetrable.  Loyer alone was excessively authoritative.

She listened to him without attention and without impatience.  His pale face and voice marked for her like a clock the minutes that passed with intolerable slowness.

Loyer had odd sallies of wit.  Immediately after he had declared his strict adhesion to the Concordat, he said:  “Bishops are spiritual prefects.  I will protect them since they belong to me.  And through them I shall hold the guardians of souls, curates.”

He recalled to her that she would have to meet people who were not of her class and who would shock her by their vulgarity.  But his situation demanded that he should not disdain anybody.  At all events, he counted on her tact and on her devotion.

She looked at him, a little astonished.

“There is no hurry, my dear.  We shall see later.”

He was tired.  He said good-night and advised her to sleep.  She was ruining her health by reading all night.  He left her.

She heard the noise of his footsteps, heavier than usual, while he traversed the library, encumbered with blue books and journals, to reach his room, where he would perhaps sleep.  Then she felt the weight on her of the night’s silence.  She looked at her watch.  It was half-past one.

She said to herself:  “He, too, is suffering.  He looked at me with so much despair and anger.”

She was courageous and ardent.  She was impatient at being a prisoner.  When daylight came, she would go, she would see him, she would explain everything to him.  It was so clear!  In the painful monotony of her thought, she listened to the rolling of wagons which at long intervals passed on the quay.  That noise preoccupied, almost interested her.  She listened to the rumble, at first faint and distant, then louder, in which she could distinguish the rolling of the wheels, the creaking of the axles, the shock of horses’ shoes, which, decreasing little by little, ended in an imperceptible murmur.

And when silence returned, she fell again into her reverie.

He would understand that she loved him, that she had never loved any one except him.  It was unfortunate that the night was so long.  She did not dare to look at her watch for fear of seeing in it the immobility of time.

She rose, went to the window, and drew the curtains.  There was a pale light in the clouded sky.  She thought it might be the beginning of dawn.  She looked at her watch.  It was half-past three.

She returned to the window.  The sombre infinity outdoors attracted her.  She looked.  The sidewalks shone under the gas-jets.  A gentle rain was falling.  Suddenly a voice ascended in the silence; acute, and then grave, it seemed to be made of several voices replying to one another.  It—­was a drunkard disputing with the beings of his dream, to whom he generously gave utterance, and whom he confounded afterward with great gestures and in furious sentences.  Therese could see the poor man walk along the parapet in his white blouse, and she could hear words recurring incessantly:  “That is what I say to the government.”