In spite of Saniel’s efforts and solicitations, supported by Nougarede’s, Florentin had embarked for New Caledonia, whence he wrote as often as he could.  His letters related all his sufferings in the terrible galleys, where he was confined during the voyage, and since his arrival they were a series of long complaints, continued from one to the other, like a story without end, turning always on the same subject, his physical sufferings, his humiliation, his discouragement, and his disgust in the midst of the unfortunates whose companion he was.

The arrival of these letters filled the mother and sister with anguish that lasted for several days; and this anguish, that neither of them could dissimulate, angered Saniel.

“What would you do if he were dead?” he asked Phillis.

“Would it not be better for him?”

“But he will return.”

“In what condition?”

“Are we the masters of fate?”

“We weep, we do not complain.”

But he complained of the weeping faces that surrounded him, the tears they concealed from him, the sighs they stifled.  Ordinarily he was tender and affectionate to his mother-in-law, with attention and deference which in some ways seemed affected, as if he were so by will rather than by natural sentiment; but at these times he forgot this tenderness, and treated her with hardness so unjust, that more than once Madame Cormier spoke of it to her daughter.

“How can your husband, who is so good to me, be so merciless regarding Florentin?  One would say that our sadness produces on him the effect of a reproach that we would address to him.”

One day when things had gone farther than usual, she had the courage to speak to him plainly:  “Forgive me for burdening you with the weariness of our disgrace,” she said to him.  “When I complain of everything, of men and things, you should remember that you are the exception, you who have done everything to save him.”

But these few words which she believed would calm the irritation of her son-in-law, had on the contrary exasperated him; he left her, furious.

“I do not understand your husband at all,” she said to her daughter.  “Will you not explain to me what the matter is with him?”

How could she give her mother the explanation that she could not give herself?  Having reached an unfathomable abyss, she dared not even lean over to look into its depths; and instead of going on in the path where she was pledged in spite of herself, she made every effort to return, or at least to stop.

What good would it do to find out why he was so peculiar, and what it was that he took so much pains to conceal?  This could only be idle curiosity on her part, for which she would be punished sooner or later.

Turning these thoughts over continually in her mind she lost her gayety, her power to resist blows of fate, such as the small trials of life, which formerly made her courageous; her vigorous elasticity sunk under the heavy weight with which it was charged, and her smiling eyes now more often expressed anxiety than happiness and confidence.