For Camors, in renouncing the greater part of the restraints which control and bind men in their relations with one another, had religiously intended to preserve one—­the sentiment of honor.  Many times, in the course of this life, he had felt himself embarrassed to limit and fix with certainty the boundaries of the only moral law he wished to respect.

It is easy to know exactly what is in the Bible; it is not easy to know exactly what the code of honor commands.

CHAPTER XII

CIRCE

But there exists, nevertheless, in this code one article, as to which M. de Camors could not deceive himself, and it was that which forbade his attempting to assail the honor of the General under penalty of being in his own eyes, as a gentleman, a felon and foresworn.  He had accepted from this old man confidence, affection, services, benefits—­everything which could bind one man inviolably to another man—­if there be beneath the heavens anything called honor.  He felt this profoundly.

His conduct toward Madame de Campvallon had been irreproachable; and all the more so, because the only woman he was interdicted from loving was the only woman in Paris, or in the universe, who naturally pleased him most.  He entertained for her, at once, the interest which attaches to forbidden fruit, to the attraction of strange beauty, and to the mystery of an impenetrable sphinx.  She was, at this time, more goddess-like than ever.  The immense fortune of her husband, and the adulation which it brought her, had placed her on a golden car.  On this she seated herself with a gracious and native majesty, as if in her proper place.

The luxury of her toilet, of her jewels, of her house and of her equipages, was of regal magnificence.  She blended the taste of an artist with that of a patrician.  Her person appeared really to be made divine by the rays of this splendor.  Large, blonde, graceful, the eyes blue and unfathomable, the forehead grave, the mouth pure and proud it was impossible to see her enter a salon with her light, gliding step, or to see her reclining in her carriage, her hands folded serenely, without dreaming of the young immortals whose love brought death.

She had even those traits of physiognomy, stern and wild, which the antique sculptors doubtless had surprised in supernatural visitations, and which they have stamped on the eyes and the lips of their marble gods.  Her arms and shoulders, perfect in form, seemed models, in the midst of the rosy and virgin snow which covered the neighboring mountains.  She was truly superb and bewitching.  The Parisian world respected as much as it admired her, for she played her difficult part of young bride to an old man so perfectly as to avoid scandal.  Without any pretence of extraordinary devotion, she knew how to join to her worldly pomps the exercise of charity, and all the other practices of an elegant piety.  Madame de la Roche-Jugan,