He loved for the devotion of which he was absolutely sure, and then, like many husbands who deceive an irreproachable wife, he was proud of her, while unfaithful to her.  She seemed to him at once the dignity and the charity of his life.  She had remained in his eyes the one to whom he could always return, the assured friend of moments of trial, the haven after the tempest, the moral peace when he was weary of the troubles of passion.  What life would he lead when she was gone?  For she would go!  Her resolution was irrevocable.  All dropped from his side at once.  The mistress, to whom he had sacrificed the noblest and most loving heart, he had lost under circumstances as abject as their two years of passion had been dishonorable.  His wife was about to leave him, and would he succeed in keeping his son?  He had returned to be avenged, and he had not even succeeded in meeting his rival.  That being so impressionable had experienced, in the face of so many repeated blows, a disappointment so absolute that he gladly looked forward to the prospect of exposing himself to death on the following day, while at the same time a bitter flood of rancor possessed him at the thought of all the persons concerned in his adventure.  He would have liked to crush Madame Steno and Maitland, Lydia and Florent—­Dorsenne, too—­for having given him the false word of honor, which had strengthened still more his thirst for vengeance by calming it for a few hours.

His confusion of thoughts was only greater when he was seated alone with his son at dinner.  That morning he had seen before him his wife’s smiling face.  The absence of her whom at that moment he valued above all else was so sad to him that he ventured one last attempt, and after the meal he sent little Luc to see if his mother would receive him.  The child returned with a reply in the negative.  “Mamma is resting....  She does not wish to be disturbed.”  So the matter was irremissible.  She would not see her husband until the morrow—­if he lived.  For vainly did Boleslas convince himself that afternoon that he had lost none of his skill in practising before his admiring seconds; a duel is always a lottery.  He might be killed, and if the possibility of an eternal separation had not moved the injured woman, what prayer would move her?  He saw her in his thoughts—­her who at that moment, with blinds drawn, all lights subdued, endured in the semi-darkness that suffering which curses but does not pardon.  Ah, but that sight was painful to him!  And, in order that she might at least know how he felt, he took their son in his arms, and, pressing him to his breast, said:  “If you see your mother before I do, you will tell her that we spent a very lonesome evening without her, will you not?”

“Why, what ails you?” exclaimed the child.  “You have wet my cheeks with tears—­you are sweeping!”

“You will tell her that, too, promise me,” replied the father, “so that she will take good care of herself, seeing how we love her.”