He was about forty years of age—­a period of life when men often become very vicious, even when they have been passably virtuous up to that time.  He affected an austere and puritanical air; was the great man of the cafe he frequented; and there passed judgment on his contemporaries and pronounced them all inferior.  He was difficult to please—­in point of virtue demanding heroism; in talent, genius; in art, perfection.

His political opinions were those of Erostratus, with this difference—­always in favor of the ancient—­that Vautrot, after setting fire to the temple, would have robbed it also.  In short, he was a fool, but a vicious fool as well.

If M. de Camors, at the moment of leaving his luxurious study that evening, had had the bad taste to turn and apply his eye to the keyhole, he would have seen something greatly to astonish even him.

He would have seen this “honorable man” approach a beautiful Italian cabinet inlaid with ivory, turn over the papers in the drawers, and finally open in the most natural manner a very complicated lock, the key of which the Count at that moment had in his pocket.

It was after this search that M. Vautrot repaired with his volume of Faust to the boudoir of the young Countess, at whose feet we have already left him too long.

CHAPTER XVII

LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY

Madame de Camors had closed her eyes to conceal her tears.  She opened them at the instant Vautrot seized her hand and called her “Poor angel!”

Seeing the man on his knees, she could not comprehend it, and only exclaimed, simply: 

“Are you mad, Vautrot?”

“Yes, I am mad!” Vautrot threw his hair back with a romantic gesture common to him, and, as he believed, to the poets-"Yes, I am mad with love and with pity, for I see your sufferings, pure and noble victim!”

The Countess only stared in blank astonishment.

“Repose yourself with confidence,” he continued, “on a heart that will be devoted to you until death—­a heart into which your tears now penetrate to its most sacred depths!”

The Countess did not wish her tears to penetrate to such a distance, so she dried them.

A man on his knees before a woman he adores must appear to her either sublime or ridiculous.  Unfortunately, the attitude of Vautrot, at once theatrical and awkward, did not seem sublime to the Countess.  To her lively imagination it was irresistibly ludicrous.  A bright gleam of amusement illumined her charming countenance; she bit her lip to conceal it, but it shone out of her eyes nevertheless.

A man never should kneel unless sure of rising a conqueror.  Otherwise, like Vautrot, he exposes himself to be laughed at.

“Rise, my good Vautrot,” the Countess said, gravely.  “This book has evidently bewildered you.  Go and take some rest and we will forget this; only you must never forget yourself again in this manner.”