'Poor little woman!' he repeated, continuing his soliloquy under the trees of the avenue. 'This beast is capable of making her repent her caprice most bitterly. He seemed in a pretty rage to-night! What want of taste and manners! In my box, too! What irony! If this good Paul were not the husband I have made him, she would be a ruined woman. And then he has discovered the secret of our meetings, and we shall have to leave the Rue du Mont-Thabor. No--the fellow is impossible!' This was one of his favourite expressions. A fresh fit of ill humour had seized him, this time directed against the poet, but, as he prided himself upon being a man of sense and upon his clear-sightedness, he suppressed it at once. 'Am I going to be angry with him for being jealous of me? That would be the height of folly! Let me rather think upon what he is likely to do. Blackmail! No. He is too young for that. An article in some paper? A poet with pretensions to sentiment--that won't be in his line. I wonder whether his indignation will lead him to cast her off altogether? That seems too good to be true. A young scribbler, as poor as a church mouse, shall give up a beautiful and loving mistress, surrounded by all the refinements of luxury, who costs him nothing! Get out! But what if he asks her to break with me, and she is foolish enough to yield?' He saw at once and clearly what disturbance such a rupture would create in his life. 'Firstly, there would be the loss of Suzanne, and where should I find another so charming, so sprightly, so accustomed to my ways and habits? Then, again, I should have to find something to do in the evenings, to say nothing of the fact that I have no better friend in Paris than this excellent Paul.' To remove his fears concerning these contingencies he was obliged to recapitulate the bonds of interest that made him indispensable to the Moraines. 'No,' he concluded, as he reached the door of his mansion in the Cours-la-Reine, 'he will not let her go, she will not give me up, and everything will come right. Everything always comes right in the end.'