A prey to this strange confusion of ideas, he had, on that very first evening on his return home, spoken of Theresa to his mother and his grandmother, who were waiting for him, in terms which had necessarily aroused the mistrust of the two women. He understood that now. But what young man has ever begun to love without being hurried by the sweet intoxication of the beginnings of a passion into confidences that were irreparable, and too often deathful, to the future of his feelings? In what manner and by what stage had this feeling entered into him? He could not have told that. When once a man loves, does it not seem as though he has always loved? Scenes were evoked, nevertheless, which reminded Hubert of the insensible habituation which had led him to visit Theresa several times a week. But had he not been gradually introduced at her house to all her friends, and, as soon as he had left his card, had he not found himself invited in all directions into that world which he scarcely knew, and which was composed partly of high functionaries of the fallen administration, partly of great manufacturers and political financiers, and partly, again, of celebrated artists and wealthy foreigners. It formed a society free from constraint and full of luxury, pleasure and life, but one the tone of which ought to have displeased the young man, for he could not comprehend its qualities of elegance and refinement, and he was very sensible of its terrible fault--the want of silence, of moral life, and of long custom. Ah! he was not much concerned with observations of this kind, occupied solely as he was to know where he should perceive Madame de Sauve and her eyes. He called to mind countless times at which he had met her--sometimes at her own house, seated at the corner of her fireplace, towards the close of the afternoon, and lost in one of her silent reveries; sometimes visiting in full costume and smiling with her Herodias lips at conversations about dresses or bonnets; sometimes in the front of a box at a theatre and talking in undertones during an interval; sometimes in the tumult of the street, dashing along behind her bright bay horse and bowing her head at the window with a graceful movement.