He resolved, however, since he had the opportunity, to put himself, once for all, beyond misery and want, by cleverly speculating, through the secret he held, on the great fortune of the General.  This secret he had already given to Madame de Camors under the inspiration of another sentiment, but he had then in his hands the proofs, which he now was without.

It was necessary, then, for him to arm himself with new and infallible proofs; but if the intrigue he was required to unmask still existed, he did not despair of detecting something certain, aided by the general knowledge he had of the private habits and ways of Camors.  This was the task to which he applied himself from this moment, day and night, with an evil ardor of hate and jealousy.  The absolute confidence which the General reposed in his wife and Camors after the latter’s marriage with Marie de Tecle, had doubtless allowed them to dispense with much of the mystery and adventure of their intrigue; but that which was ardent, poetic, and theatrical to the Marquise’s imagination had not been lost.  Love alone was not sufficient for her.  She needed danger, scenic effect, and pleasure heightened by terror.  Once or twice, in the early time, she was reckless enough to leave her house during the night and to return before day.  But she was obliged to renounce these audacious flights, finding them too perilous.

These nocturnal interviews with M. de Camors were rare, and she had usually received him at home.  This was their arrangement:  An open space, sometimes used as a woodyard, was next the garden of the Hotel Campvallon.  The General had purchased a portion of it and had had a cottage erected in the midst of a kitchen-garden, and had placed in it, with his usual kind-heartedness, an old ‘sous-officier’, named Mesnil, who had served under him in the artillery.  This Mesnil enjoyed his master’s confidence.  He was a kind of forester on the property; he lived in Paris in the winter, but occasionally passed two or three days in the country whenever the General wished to obtain information about the crops.  Madame de Campvallon and M. de Camors chose the time of these absences for their dangerous interviews at night.  Camors, apprised from within by some understood signal, entered the enclosure surrounding the cottage of Mesnil, and thence proceeded to the garden belonging to the house.  Madame de Campvallon always charged herself with the peril that charmed her—­with keeping open one of the windows on the ground floor.  The Parisian custom of lodging the domestics in the attics gave to this hardihood a sort of security, notwithstanding its being always hazardous.  Near the end of May, one of these occasions, always impatiently awaited on both sides, presented itself, and M. de Camors at midnight penetrated into the little garden of the old ‘sous-officier’.  At the moment when he turned the key in the gate of the enclosure, he thought he heard a slight sound behind him.  He turned, cast a rapid glance over the dark space that surrounded him, and thinking himself mistaken, entered.  An instant after, the shadow of a man appeared at the angle of a pile of lumber, which was scattered over the carpenter’s yard.  This shadow remained for some time immovable in front of the windows of the hotel and then plunged again into the darkness.