Strange as it may appear, the idea of marrying her had occurred to him.  Then he said to himself that this weakness was in direct contradiction to his principles, and that she would cause him to lose forever his mastery over himself, and throw him back into the nothingness of his past life.  Yet with the corrupt inspirations of his depraved soul he foresaw that the moment he touched her hands with the lips of a lover a new sentiment would spring up in her soul.  As he abandoned himself to these passionate imaginings, the recollection of young Madame Lescande came back suddenly to his memory.  He grew pale in the darkness.  At this moment he was passing the edge of a little wood belonging to the Comte de Tecle, of which a portion had recently been cleared.  It was not chance alone that had directed the Count’s ride to this point.  Madame de Tecle loved this spot, and had frequently taken him there, and on the preceding evening, accompanied by her daughter and her father-in-law, had visited it with him.

The site was a peculiar one.  Although not far from houses, the wood was very wild, as if a thousand miles distant from any inhabited place.

You would have said it was a virgin forest, untouched by the axe of the pioneer.  Enormous stumps without bark, trunks of gigantic trees, covered the declivity of the hill, and barricaded, here and there, in a picturesque manner, the current of the brook which ran into the valley.  A little farther up the dense wood of tufted trees contributed to diffuse that religious light half over the rocks, the brushwood and the fertile soil, and on the limpid water, which is at once the charm and the horror of old neglected woods.  In this solitude, and on a space of cleared ground, rose a sort of rude hut, constructed by a poor devil who was a sabot-maker by trade, and who had been allowed to establish himself there by the Comte de Tecle, and to use the beech-trees to gain his humble living.  This Bohemian interested Madame de Tecle, probably because, like M. de Camors, he had a bad reputation.  He lived in his cabin with a woman who was still pretty under her rags, and with two little boys with golden curls.

He was a stranger in the neighborhood, and the woman was said not to be his wife.  He was very taciturn, and his features seemed fine and determined under his thick, black beard.

Madame de Tecle amused herself seeing him make his sabots.  She loved the children, who, though dirty, were beautiful as angels; and she pitied the woman.  She had a secret project to marry her to the man, in case she had not yet been married, which seemed probable.

Camors walked his horse slowly over the rocky and winding path on the slope of the hillock.  This was the moment when the ghost of Madame Lescande had risen before him, and he believed he could almost hear her weep.  Suddenly this illusion gave place to a strange reality.  The voice of a woman plainly called him by name, in accents of distress—­“Monsieur de Camors!”