'No,' said the poet, as he made his way home, 'I will not descend to such depths.' For the first time perhaps since witnessing Claude's unhappy passion he really understood the nature of his wretched friend's malady. He had just discovered in himself feelings identical to those which had made such an abject slave of Colette's lover--a mingling of utter contempt and ardent physical longing for a woman justly tried and condemned. Yes, in spite of all he had learnt he still desired Suzanne--still desired those lips kissed by Desforges and all that beauty which the hoary libertine had stained but not destroyed. It was that fair white flesh that troubled his senses now--nought but that flesh! To this had come his noble love, his worship of her whom he had once called his Madonna. Claude was right: if he yielded to this base longing but once, all would be lost. His loathing for the slough of corruption in which his friend was helplessly struggling was so intense that it gave him strength to say, 'I pledge myself not to go to the Rue des Dames on Monday,' and he knew he would keep his word. Whilst Suzanne was undergoing the tortures of hope and despair in the little blue _salon_ on the appointed morning René too was suffering intensely, but it was in his own room. 'I won't go--I won't go!' he muttered repeatedly. Then he thought of his friend, and he sighed 'Poor Claude!' as he fully realised the position of the man who had been beaten in the struggle in which he himself was now engaged. He pitied himself whilst pitying Colette's victim, and this pity, as well as his old and long-continued religious habits, aided his courage. For some time now he had refrained from all observances, and had surrendered himself to those doubts which all modern writers entertain more or less before returning to Christianity as the sole source of spiritual life. But even during the period of doubt the moral muscle, developed by exercise in childhood and youth, continues to put forth its strength. In his resistance to the most pressing calls of passion, the nephew and pupil of the Abbé Taconet once more found this power at his service. When the last stroke of twelve had died away he said to himself, 'Suzanne has gone home--I am saved.'