In this terrible struggle, too often victorious against nature and truth, the man was for once vanquished.  But it would be idle to imagine that a character of this temperament and of this obduracy could transform itself, or could be materially modified under the stroke of a few transitory emotions, or of a few nervous shocks.  M. de Camors rallied quickly from his weakness, if even he did not repent it.  He spent eight days at Reuilly, remarking in the countenance of Madame de Tecle and in her manner toward him, more ease than formerly.

On his return to Paris, with thoughtful care he made some changes in the interior arrangement of his mansion.  This was to prepare for the Countess and her son, who were to join him a few weeks later, larger and more comfortable apartments, in which they were to be installed.

CHAPTER XIX

THE REPTILE TURNS TO STING

When Madame de Camors came to Paris and entered the home of her husband, she there experienced the painful impressions of the past, and the sombre preoccupations of the future; but she brought with her, although in a fragile form, a powerful consolation.

Assailed by grief, and ever menaced by new emotion she was obliged to renounce the nursing of her child; but, nevertheless, she never left him, for she was jealous even of his nurse.  She at least wished to be loved by him.  She loved him with an infinite passion.  She loved him because he was her own son and of her blood.  He was the price of her misfortune—­of her pain.  She loved him because he was her only hope of human happiness hereafter.  She loved him because she found him as beautiful as the day.  And it was true he was so; for he resembled his father—­and she loved him also on that account.  She tried to concentrate her heart and all her thoughts on this dear creature, and at first she thought she had succeeded.  She was surprised at herself, at her own tranquillity, when she saw Madame de Campvallon; for her lively imagination had exhausted, in advance, all the sadness which her new existence could contain; but when she had lost the kind of torpor into which excessive suffering had plunged her—­when her maternal sensations were a little quieted by custom, her woman’s heart recovered itself in the mother’s.  She could not prevent herself from renewing her passionate interest in her graceful though terrible husband.

Madame de Tecle went to pass two months with her daughter in Paris, and then returned to the country.

Madame de Camors wrote to her, in the beginning of the following spring, a letter which gave her an exact idea of the sentiments of the young woman at the time, and of the turn her domestic life had taken.  After a long and touching detail of the health and beauty of her son Robert, she added: