est feelings of mental
torture. Not being compulsorily preoccupied by cares for the future or
daily toil, it is utterly exposed to heavy moral affliction. Able to
acquire all that money can purchase, it desires or regrets with intense
violence--

"What gold could never buy."

The mental torture of M. d'Harville was intense, for, after all, what he
desired was only what was just, and actually legal,--the society, if not
the love, of his wife.

But, when placed beside the inexorable refusal of Clemence, he asked
himself if there was not the bitterest derision in these words of the
law: The wife belongs to her husband.

To what influence, to what means could he have recourse to subdue this
coldness, this repugnance, which turned his whole existence into one
long punishment, since he could not--ought not--would not love any woman
but his wife?

He could not but see in this, as in many other positions of conjugal
life, the simple will of the husband or the wife imperatively
substituted, without appeal or possibility of prevention, for the
sovereign will of the law.

To the paroxysms of vain anger there succeeded a melancholy depression.
The future weighed him down, heavy, dull, and chill. He only saw before
him the grief that would doubtless render more frequent the attacks of
his fearful malady.

"Oh," he exclaimed, at once in tears and despair, "it is my fault,--it
is my fault! Poor, unhappy girl! I deceived her,--shamefully deceived
her! She must,--she ought to hate me; and yet but now she displayed the
deepest interest in me, and, instead of contenting myself with that, my
mad passion led me away, and I became tender. I spoke of my love, and
scarcely had my lips touched her hand than she became startled, and
bounded with fright. If I could for a moment have doubted the invincible
repugnance with which I inspire her, what she said to the prince must
for ever destroy that illusion. Ah, it is frightful,--frightful! By what
right has she confided to him this hideous secret? It is an unworthy
betrayal! By what right?--alas, by the right the victim has to complain
of its executioner! Poor girl! So young,--so loving! All she could find
most cruel to say against the horrid existence I have entailed upon her
was, that such was not the lot of which she had dreamed, and that she
was very young to renounce all hopes of love! I know Clemence, and the
word she gave me,--the word she gave to the prince,--she will abide b