wife.

Yes, at the end of her first year of married life, she confessed to
herself that her happiness would be complete if she could only forget
the terrible past.

Andre adored her. He had been wonderfully successful in his business
affairs; he wished to be immensely rich, not for himself, but for the
sake of his beloved wife, whom he would surround with every luxury. He
thought her the most beautiful woman in Paris, and determined that she
should be the most superbly dressed.

Eighteen months after her marriage, Madame Fauvel presented her husband
with a son. But neither this child, nor a second son born a year later,
could make her forget the first one of all, the poor, forsaken babe who
had been thrown upon strangers, mercenaries, who valued the money, but
not the child for whom it was paid.

She would look at her two sons, surrounded by every luxury which money
could give, and murmur to herself:

"Who knows if the abandoned one has bread to eat?"

If she only knew where he was: if she only dared inquire! But she was
afraid.

Sometimes she would be uneasy about Gaston's jewels, constantly fearing
that their hiding-place would be discovered. Then she would think, "I
may as well be tranquil; misfortune has forgotten me."

Poor, deluded woman! Misfortune is a visitor who sometimes delays his
visits, but always comes in the end.

XV

Louis de Clameran, the second son of the marquis, was one of those
self-controlled men who, beneath a cool, careless manner, conceal a
fiery temperament, and ungovernable passions.

All sorts of extravagant ideas had begun to ferment in his disordered
brain, long before the occurrence which decided the destiny of the
Clameran family.

Apparently occupied in the pursuit of pleasure, this precocious
hypocrite longed for a larger field in which to indulge his evil
inclinations, secretly cursing the stern necessity which chained him
down to this dreary country life, and the old chateau, which to him was
more gloomy than a prison, and as lifeless as the grave.

This existence, dragged out in the country and the small neighboring
towns, was too monotonous for his restless nature. The paternal
authority, though so gently expressed, exasperated his rebellious
temper. He thirsted for independence, riches, excitement, and all the
unknown pleasures that pall upon the senses simultaneously with their
attainment.

Louis did not love his father, and he hated his brother Gaston.