"She has perverted his heart, she has made a monster of him," said Madame Liauran to Madame Castel when telling her of this scene, which was followed by three weeks of silence between mother and son. The latter appeared at breakfast, kissed his mother's forehead, asked her how she was, sat down to table, and did not open his mouth during the entire meal. Most frequently he was not present at dinner. He had confided this grief, as he confided all his griefs, to Theresa, who had entreated him to yield. "Do this," she said, "if it be only for me. It is cruel to me to think that I am the prompter of an evil action in your life." "Noble darling!" the young man had said, covering her hands with kisses, and drowning himself in the look from those eyes which were so sweet to him. But if his love for his mistress had been increased by this generosity, so, too, had his sensibility to the rancour which the expressions used in their painful quarrel had stirred up within him against his mother. The latter, however, had been so shaken by this disagreement as to have a recurrence of her nervous malady, which she was able to conceal from him who was its cause. She was almost entirely forbidden to move, which did not prevent her from dragging herself at night to her window, at the cost of grievous suffering. She would open the panes and then the shutters silently, and with the precaution of a criminal, in order to see the illumination of Hubert's casements on his return, and as she gazed at this light filtering in a slender stream, and witnessing to the presence of the son at once so dear and so completely lost, she would feel her anger relax, and despair take possession of her. They were reconciled, thanks to the intervention of Madame Castel, who, between these two hostilities, suffered a double martyrdom. From the mother she obtained the promise that Madame de Sauve should never again be spoken of, and from the son apologies for his sulkiness during so many days. A fresh period began, in which Marie Alice sought to keep Hubert at home by some modification in her mode of life. Obstinately hoping even in despair, as happens whenever the heart holds too passionate a desire, she told herself that this woman's power over her son must be largely the result of the recreation that he derived from the society surrounding her. Was not the home in the Rue Vaneau very monotonous for an idle young man?