ant?
She did not know herself. She had no desire for society, no thirst for
the excitement of the world, the pleasures she might have had possessed
no attraction for her, but all her dreams and illusions had faded away,
leaving her life as colorless as the old tapestry chairs in the chateau
drawing-room.

Her relations with Julien had completely changed, for he became quite a
different man when they settled down after their wedding tour, like an
actor who becomes himself again as soon as he has finished playing his
part. He hardly ever took any notice of his wife, or even spoke to her;
all his love seemed to have suddenly disappeared, and it was very seldom
that he accompanied her to her room of a night. He had taken the
management of the estate and the household into his own hands, and he
looked into all the accounts, saw that the peasants paid their arrears
of rent, and cut down every expense. No longer the polished, elegant man
who had won Jeanne's heart, he looked and dressed like a well-to-do
farmer, neglecting his personal appearance with the carelessness of a
man who no longer strives to fascinate. He always wore an old velvet
shooting-jacket, covered all over with stains, which he had found one
day as he was looking over his old clothes; then he left off shaving,
and his long, untrimmed beard made him look quite plain, while his hands
never received any attention.

After each meal, he drank four or five small glasses of brandy, and when
Jeanne affectionately reproached him, he answered so roughly: "Leave me
alone, can't you?" that she never tried to reason with him again.

She accepted all this in a calm way that astonished herself, but she
looked upon him now as a stranger who was nothing whatever to her. She
often thought of it all, and wondered how it was that after having loved
and married each other in a delicious passion of affection they should
suddenly awake from their dream of love as utter strangers, as if they
had never lain in each other's arms. How was it his indifference did not
hurt her more? Had they been mistaken in each other? Would she have been
more pained if Julien had still been handsome, elegant and attractive?

* * * * *

It was understood that at the new year the baron and baroness were to
spend a few months in their Rouen house, leaving Les Peuples to the
young people who would become settled that winter, and so get accustomed
to the place where they