to miss one of those
favorable chances which the fluctuations of the Bourse and the increased
value of property afforded to clever financiers in Paris during the
first three years after the Restoration. He had trebled his protectress'
capital, and all the more easily because the Countess had no scruples
as to the means which might make her an enormous fortune as quickly as
possible. The emoluments derived by the Count from the places he held
she spent on the housekeeping, so as to reinvest her dividends; and
Delbecq lent himself to these calculations of avarice without trying to
account for her motives. People of that sort never trouble themselves
about any secrets of which the discovery is not necessary to their own
interests. And, indeed, he naturally found the reason in the thirst for
money, which taints almost every Parisian woman; and as a fine fortune
was needed to support the pretensions of Comte Ferraud, the secretary
sometimes fancied that he saw in the Countess' greed a consequence of
her devotion to a husband with whom she still was in love. The Countess
buried the secrets of her conduct at the bottom of her heart. There lay
the secrets of life and death to her, there lay the turning-point of
this history.

At the beginning of the year 1818 the Restoration was settled on
an apparently immovable foundation; its doctrines of government, as
understood by lofty minds, seemed calculated to bring to France an era
of renewed prosperity, and Parisian society changed its aspect. Madame
la Comtesse Ferraud found that by chance she had achieved for love a
marriage that had brought her fortune and gratified ambition. Still
young and handsome, Madame Ferraud played the part of a woman of
fashion, and lived in the atmosphere of the Court. Rich herself, with a
rich husband who was cried up as one of the ablest men of the royalist
party, and, as a friend of the King, certain to be made Minister, she
belonged to the aristocracy, and shared its magnificence. In the midst
of this triumph she was attacked by a moral canker. There are feelings
which women guess in spite of the care men take to bury them. On
the first return of the King, Comte Ferraud had begun to regret his
marriage. Colonel Chabert's widow had not been the means of allying him
to anybody; he was alone and unsupported in steering his way in a course
full of shoals and beset by enemies. Also, perhaps, when he came to
judge his wife coolly, he may have discerned i