The mistress was amazed.  A child who had been brought up so simply, in spite of her large fortune, a little commoner, speaking of level-going fillies and the Poule des Produits!  What a change had come over her and what incredible influence this frivolous, vain Panine had over that young and right-minded girl!  And that in a few months!  What would it be later?  He would succeed in imparting to her his tastes and would mould her to his whims, and the young modest girl whom he had received from the mother would become a horsey and fast woman.

Was it possible that Micheline could be happy in that hollow and empty life?  The love of her husband satisfied her.  His love was all she asked for, all else was indifferent to her.  Thus of her mother, the impassioned toiler, was born the passionate lover!  All the fervency which the mother had given to business, Micheline had given to love.

Moreover, Serge behaved irreproachably.  One must do him that justice.  Not even an appearance accused him.  He was faithful, unlikely as that may seem in a man of his kind; he never left his wife.  He had hardly ever gone out without her; they were a couple of turtle-doves.  They were laughed at.

“The Princess has tied a string round Serge’s foot,” was said by some of Serge’s former woman friends!

It was something to be sure of her daughter’s happiness.  That happiness was dearly, bought; but as the proverb says: 

“Money troubles are not mortal!”

And, besides, it was evident that the Prince did not keep account of his money; his hand was always open.  And never did a great lord do more honor to his fortune.  Panine, in marrying Micheline, had found the mistress’s cash-box at his disposal.

This prodigious cash-box had seemed to him inexhaustible, and he had drawn on it like a Prince in the Arabian Nights on the treasure of the genii.

Perhaps it would suffice to let him see that he was spending the capital as well as the income to make him alter his line of conduct.  At all events, the moment was not yet opportune, and, besides, the amount was not yet large enough.  Cry out about some hundred thousand francs!  Madame Desvarennes would be thought a miser and would be covered with shame.  She must wait.

And, shut up in her office in the Rue Saint-Dominique with Marechal, who acted as her confidant, she worked with heart and soul full of passion and anger, making money.  It was fine to witness the duel between these two beings:  the one useful, the other useless; one sacrificing everything to work, the other everything to pleasure.

Toward the end of October, the weather at Cernay became unsettled, and Micheline complained of the cold.  Country life so pleased Serge that he turned a deaf ear to her complaints.  But lost in that large house, the autumn winds rustling through the trees, whose leaves were tinted with yellow, Micheline became sad, and the Prince understood that it was time to go back to Paris.