These rules were specified in their code.  The text it is difficult to give; but it was based entirely on the point of honor, and regulated the affairs of the club, such as the card-table, the turf, duelling, and gallantry.  For example, any member was disqualified from belonging to this association who either insulted or interfered with the wife or relative of one of his colleagues.  The only penalty was exclusion:  but the consequences of this exclusion were grave; for all the members ceased thereafter to associate with, recognize, or even bow to the offender.  The Templars found in this secret society many advantages.  It was a great security in their intercourse with one another, and in the different circumstances of daily life, where they met continually either at the opera, in salons, or on the turf.

Camors was an exception among his companions and rivals in Parisian life by the systematic decision of his doctrine.  It was not so much an embodiment of absolute scepticism and practical materialism; but the want of a moral law is so natural to man, and obedience to higher laws so sweet to him, that the chosen adepts to whom the project of Camors was submitted accepted it with enthusiasm.  They were happy in being able to substitute a sort of positive and formal religion for restraints so limited as their own confused and floating notions of honor.  For Camors himself, as is easily understood, it was a new barrier which he wished to erect between himself and the passion which fascinated him.  He attached himself to this with redoubled force, as the only moral bond yet left him.  He completed his work by making the General accept the title of President of the Association.  The General, to whom Honor was a sort of mysterious but real goddess, was delighted to preside over the worship of his idol.  He felt flattered by his young friend’s selection, and esteemed him the more.

It was the middle of winter.  The Marquise Campvallon had resumed for some time her usual course of life, which was at the same time strict but elegant.  Punctual at church every morning, at the Bois and at charity bazaars during the day, at the opera or the theatres in the evening, she had received M. de Camors without the shadow of apparent emotion.  She even treated him more simply and more naturally than ever, with no recurrence to the past, no allusion to the scene in the park during the storm; as if she had, on that day, disclosed everything that had lain hidden in her heart.  This conduct so much resembled indifference, that Camors should have been delighted; but he was not—­on the contrary he was annoyed by it.  A cruel but powerful interest, already too dear to his blase soul, was disappearing thus from his life.  He was inclined to believe that Madame de Campvallon possessed a much less complicated character than he had fancied; and that little by little absorbed in daily trifles, she had become in reality what she pretended to be—­a good woman, inoffensive, and contented with her lot.