Spent by continual anxiety, the mother had exhausted her strength when an event, unexpected though easy to be foreseen, gave still greater prominence to the antagonism which brought her into ceaseless collision with her son. It was Holy Week. She had counted upon Hubert's confession and communion for making a supreme attempt, and inducing him to sever relations which she considered as yet incompletely guilty, but full of danger. It could not enter into her head as a fervent Christian that her son would fail in his paschal duty. Thus she felt no doubt with respect to his reply as she asked him at a time when they were alone together: "On what day will you receive the sacrament this year?" "Mamma," replied Hubert, with evident embarrassment, "I ask your forgiveness for the sorrow that I am going to cause you. I must, however, confess to you that doubts have come upon me, and that conscientiously I do not think that I can approach the holy table." This reply was the lightning-flash which suddenly showed Marie Alice the abyss wherein her son had sunk, while she believed him to be merely on the brink. She was not for a moment deceived by Hubert's imaginary pretext. And whence could religious doubts come to him who for months had not read a book? She knew, further, her child's simplicity of soul towards the instruction over which she had herself presided. No; if he would not communicate it was because he would not confess. He had a horror of acknowledging some unacknowledgable fault. And what was this if not that one which had been the evil work of the past six months? . . . An adulterer! Her son was an adulterer! A terrible word, which to her, so loyal and pure and pious, described the most repellant baseness, the ignominy of falsehood mingled with the turpitude of the flesh. In her indignation she found energy to at last open up her whole heart to Hubert. Agitated as she was by religious fears for the salvation of her beloved child, she uttered sentences which she would never have believed herself capable of pronouncing, mentioning Madame de Sauve by name, heaping the harshest reproaches upon her, withering her with all the scorn which a woman who is virtuous can harbour for one who is not, invoking the memory of their common past, threatening and beseeching in turns--in short, throwing aside all calculation. "You are mistaken, mamma," replied Hubert, who had endured this first assault without speaking. "Madame de Sauve is not at all what you say; but as I cannot allow my friends to be insulted in my presence, I warn you that, on the next conversation of the kind that we have together, I shall leave the house." And with this rejoinder, uttered with all the coolness that the feeling of his mother's injustice had left him, he quitted the room without another word.