And yet, since he was young, and since, in his intimacy with Theresa, he had made a habit of the most ardent pleasure--pleasure which exalts both mind and body in divine communion--he began, after some weeks of these sorrows and reflections, to feel a dim desire, an unacknowledged appetite for this woman of whom he wished to know nothing more, whom he must regard as dead, and whom he so utterly despised. This strange and unconscious return towards the delights of his love, but a return no longer ennobled by any ideal, manifested itself in a curiosity such as those are which issue from the unfathomable depths of our being. He felt a sickly longing to see with his own eyes this man who had been Theresa's lover, this La Croix-Firmin, to whom his mistress had given herself, and, in whose arms she had quivered with voluptuousness as in his own. To a spiritual director who had traced, period by period, the ravage wrought in this soul by the corrupt leaven inoculated by Theresa's betrayal, such curiosity would doubtless have appeared the most decisive symptom of a metamorphosis in this youth who had grown up amid all modesty. Was it not the transition from that absolute horror of evil which is the torment and glory of virgin natures, to that kind of still more frightful attraction which borders so closely upon depravity? But it was especially that frightful facility of imagination about the impurity of a desired woman, which, by one of the saddest laws of our nature, brings it to pass that proof of infidelity, while degrading the lover, and dishonouring the mistress, so frequently kindles love. It is probable that, in such cases, the conception of the perfidy acts like an infamous picture, and that this is the explanation of those fits of sensuality which occur amid the hatred felt, and which astonish the moralist in certain law-suits founded upon the dramas of jealousy. Poor Hubert was certainly not one to harbour such base instincts; and yet his curiosity to become acquainted with his Trouville rival was already a very unhealthy one. Its nature was the same as that of Theresa's fault. It is the obscure, indestructible recollection of the flesh which operates without the knowledge of the being who is under its influence. The memory of all the caresses given and received since the night at Folkestone counted for something in this desire to feast his eyes on the real existence of the hated man. It became something so sharp And severe that after struggling for a long time, And with the feeling that he was lowering himself strangely, Hubert could resist no longer, and he employed the following almost childish procedure, for the realisation of his singular desire.