He had a doubt as to his accuracy, and he took a carriage to go to the office of the only paper that he read habitually. He searched through the collection, and laid his hand upon the short paragraph, which he recollected, doubtless, because he had read it several times on Theresa's account. It was the report of a garden party given by a Marchioness de Jussat. Did it merely prove that this Monsieur de la Croix-Firman had been introduced to Madame de Sauve? "Ah!" exclaimed the poor fellow after these murderous reflections, "am I going to become jealous?" This represented an insupportable idea to him, for nothing was more contrary to the innate loyalty of his whole nature than distrust. Then he remembered the warm tenderness which she had lavished upon him from the first, and as he had ever since followed the sweet practice of opening up his whole heart to her, he said to himself that he had a sure means of removing this evil vision for ever. He had simply to see Theresa and tell her everything. In the first place this would warn her of a calumny which she must immediately put down. Then, he felt that a single word coming from the lips of this woman would immediately dissipate every shadow of anxiety in his mind. He entered a post-office and scrawled on the blue paper of a little pneumatic despatch: "Tuesday, five o'clock.--The lover is sad, and cannot do without his mistress. Wicked persons have been maligning her to him. Who should hear all this, if not the dear confidante of every sorrow and every joy? Can she come to-morrow, she knows where, at ten o'clock in the morning? Let her do so, and she shall be loved still more, if that be possible, by her H.L.,--which denotes this closing afternoon: Horrible lassitude." It was in this strain of tender childishness that he wrote to her, with the fondness of language wherein passion often dissembles its native violence. He slipped the slender despatch into the box, and was astonished to find himself feeling almost placid again. He had acted, and the presence of the real had driven the vision away. CHAPTER VIII At the moment when Theresa de Sauve received Hubert's despatch she was preparing to dress for dining out. She immediately countermanded her carriage, and wrote a hasty line, pleading headache as an excuse for absence. She had been seized with trembling and an icy sweat on reading the simple phrases of the blue note. She gave orders that she was not at home, and cowered down in a low chair before her bedroom fire, with her head in her hands. Since her return from Trouville she had been living in continued agony, and what she had been dreading like death was come. Her darling, whom she had left so perfectly tranquil and cheerful at two o'clock, could not have fallen into the state of mind which she could feel through the graceful childishness of his note, if some catastrophe had not happened. What catastrophe? Theresa guessed it too well.