ttle by
little, however, he accustomed himself to pass the greater part of
the afternoon with Bertha, while Sauvresy was away arranging his
affairs--selling, negotiating, using his time in cutting down
interests and discussing with agents and attorneys. He soon
perceived that she listened to him with pleasure, and he judged
from this that she was a decidedly superior woman, much better than
her husband. He had no wit, but possessed an inexhaustible fund of
anecdotes and adventures. He had seen so many things and known so
many people that he was as interesting as a chronicle. He had a
sort of frothy fervor, not wanting in brilliancy, and a polite
cynicism which, at first, surprised one. Had Bertha been
unimpassioned, she might have judged him at his value; but she had
lost her power of insight. She heard him, plunged in a foolish
ecstasy, as one hears a traveller who has returned from far and
dangerous countries, who has visited peoples of whose language the
hearer is ignorant, and lived in the midst of manners and customs
incomprehensible to ourselves.

Days, weeks, months passed on, and the Count de Tremorel did not
find life at Valfeuillu as dull as he had thought. He insensibly
slipped along the gentle slope of material well-being, which leads
directly to brutishness. A physical and moral torpor had succeeded
the fever of the first days, free from disagreeable sensations,
though wanting in excitement. He ate and drank much, and slept
twelve round hours. The rest of the time, when he did not talk
with Bertha, he wandered in the park, lounged in a rocking-chair,
or took a jaunt in the saddle. He even went fishing under the
willows at the foot of the garden; and grew fat. His best days
were those which he spent at Corbeil with Jenny. He found in her
something of his past, and she always quarrelled with him, which
woke him up. Besides, she brought him the gossip of Paris and the
small talk of the boulevards. She came regularly every week, and
her love for Hector, far from diminishing, seemed to grow with each
interview. The poor girl's affairs were in a troubled condition.
She had bought her establishment at too high a price, and her
partner at the end of the first month decamped, carrying off three
thousand francs. She knew nothing about the trade which she had
undertaken, and she was robbed without mercy on all sides. She
said nothing of these troubles to Hector, but she intended to ask
him to come to her assistance