ours at his hands. In this
respect he was more perspicacious than his mother, who credited herself
with a certain power over the dark, hairy little man, whom every
Thursday she engulfed in her majestic skirts on the way from the
drawing-room to the dinner-table. He judged him to be disobliging. And
then something had gone wrong between them. Robert, as ill luck would
have it, had forestalled his Minister in his intimacy with a lady whom
the latter loved to the verge of absurdity: Madame de Neuilles, a woman
of easy virtue. And it seemed to him that the hairy little man suspected
it, and regarded him with an unfriendly eye. And, lastly, the idea had
grown upon him at the Quai d'Orsay that Ministers are neither able nor
willing to do very much. But he did not exaggerate matters, and thought
it quite possible that he might obtain a minor secretaryship. Such had
been his wish hitherto. He was most anxious not to leave Paris. His
mother, on the contrary, would have preferred that he should be sent to
The Hague, where a post as third secretary was vacant. Now, of a sudden,
he decided in favour of The Hague. "I'll go," he said. "The sooner the
better." Having made up his mind, he reviewed his reasons. In the first
place, it would be an excellent thing for his future career. Again, The
Hague post was a pleasant one. A friend of his, who had held it, had
enlarged upon the delightful hypocrisy of the sleepy little capital,
where everything was engineered and "wangled" for the comfort of the
Diplomatic Corps. He reflected, also, that The Hague was the august
cradle of a new international law, and finally went so far as to invoke
the argument that he would be giving pleasure to his mother. After which
he realized that he wanted to leave home solely on account of Felicie.

His thoughts of her were not benevolent. He knew her to be mendacious,
timorous, and a malicious friend. He had proof that she was given to
falling in love with actors of the lowest type, or, at all events, that
she made shift with them. He was not certain that she did not deceive
him, not that he had discovered anything suspect in the life which she
was leading, but because he was properly distrustful of all women. He
conjured up in his mind all the evil that he knew of her, and persuaded
himself that she was a little jade, and, being conscious that he loved
her, he believed that he loved her merely because of her extreme
prettiness. This reason seemed to him a so