But when the Moraines had driven away in their brougham on this mild and balmy May evening he began his walk, a prey to most sad and bitter impressions, although the day had been a particularly pleasant one until René Vincy's entry in the box. Suzanne had not been mistaken. He knew all. The poet's visit had struck him all the more forcibly since, that very afternoon, on leaving the house in the Rue de Rivoli, he had found himself face to face with the young man, who stared hard at him. 'Where the deuce have I seen that fellow before?' he had asked himself in vain. 'Where could my senses have been?' he said, when Paul Moraines mentioned René's name to Suzanne. The expression on the visitor's face had immediately aroused his suspicions; when Suzanne went into the ante-room he had placed himself so as to follow the interview from the corner of his eye. Without hearing what the poet said, he had guessed by the look in his eyes, the frown on his brow, and the gestures of his hands that he was taking Suzanne to task. The feigned indisposition of the latter had not deceived him for a single moment. He was one of those who only believe in women's headaches when there is nothing to be gained by them. The manner in which his mistress's hand trembled on his arm as they descended the staircase had strengthened his convictions, and now, as he crossed the Place de l'Opéra, he told himself the most mortifying truths instead of going into his usual raptures before the vast perspective of the avenue, but lately lighted by electricity, or before the façade of the Opera, which he declared to be finer than Notre Dame. 'I have been let in,' he said, 'and at my age, too! It's rather too bad--and for whom?' All combined to render his humiliation more complete--the absolute secresy with which Suzanne had deceived him, and without arousing the slightest suspicion; the startling suddenness of the discovery; lastly, the quality of his rival, a bit of a boy, a scribbling poet! A score of details, one more exasperating than the other, crowded in upon him. The forlorn and bashful look on the poet's face when he had seen him on the day after Madame Komof's _soirée_; Suzanne's inexplicable fits of abstraction, which he had scarcely noticed at the time and her allusions to matutinal visits to the dentist's, the Louvre, or the Bon Marché. And he had swallowed it all--he, Baron Desforges! 'I have been an ass!' he repeated aloud. 'But how did she manage it?' It was this that completely floored him; he could not understand how she had gone about it, even when René's attitude in the box left him no doubt as to their relations. No, there was no possibility of doubt.