instinct had at least served her in leading her upon a route on which she met no one.  Now the sense of reality returned.  She recognized the objects around her, and that framework, so familiar to her piety of fervent Catholicism, the enormous square, the obelisk of Sixte-Quint in the centre, the fountains, the circular portico crowned with bishops and martyrs, the palace of the Vatican at the corner, and yonder the facade of the large papal cathedral, with the Saviour and the apostles erect upon the august pediment.

On any other occasion in life the pious young woman would have seen in the chance which led her thither, almost unconsciously, an influence from above, an invitation to enter the church, there to ask the strength to suffer of the God who said:  “Let him who wishes follow me, let him renounce all, let him take up his cross and follow me!” But she was passing through that first bitter paroxysm of grief in which it is impossible to pray, so greatly does the revolt of nature cry out within us.  Later, we may recognize the hand of Providence in the trial imposed upon us.  We see at first only the terrible injustice of fate, and we tremble in the deepest recesses of our souls with rebellion at the blow from which we bleed.  That which rendered the rebellion more invincible and more fierce in Maud, was the suddenness of the mortal blow.

Daily some pure, honest woman, like her, acquires the proof of the treason of a husband whom she has not ceased to love.  Ordinarily, the indisputable proof is preceded by a long period of suspicion.  The faithless one neglects his hearth.  A change takes place in his daily habits.  Various hints reveal to the outraged wife the trace of a rival, which woman’s jealousy distinguishes with a scent as certain as that of a dog which finds a stranger in the house.  And, finally, although there is in the transition from doubt to certainty a laceration of the heart, it is at least the laceration of a heart prepared.  That preparation, that adaptation, so to speak, of her soul to the truth, Maud had been deprived of.  The care taken by Madame Steno to strengthen the friendship between her and Alba had suppressed the slightest signs.  Boleslas had no need to change his domestic life in order to see his mistress at his convenience and in an intimacy entertained, provoked, by his wife herself.  The wife, too, had been totally, absolutely deceived.  She had assisted in her husband’s adultery with one of those illusions so complete that it seemed improbable to the indifferent and to strangers.  The awakening from such illusions is the most terrible.  That man whom society considered a complaisant husband, that woman who seemed so indulgent a wife, suddenly find that they have committed a murder or a suicide, to the great astonishment of the world which, even then, hesitates to recognize in that access of folly the proof, the blow, more formidable, more instantaneous in its ravages, than those of love-sudden disillusion.