The young man had spoken the truth in his note to Chazel. A ten days' journey had brought him to an estate which he possessed close to Nantes--the De Querne family came from this town--and he had stayed there to arrange some business respecting farm rents. Then he had returned to Paris, persuaded that the rupture was a final one, seeing that during those ten days Helen had not hazarded any attempt at reconciliation. By a contradiction in his nature, too usual with him to cause him astonishment, these early moments had been melancholy ones. He was one of those men who are moved by memories after having remained nearly indifferent to the reality, who become enamoured of the women whom they cast off, just as they regret the places of which they tired when living in them--a restless race, who know nothing of the present but its weariness, and for whom the past assumes a unique and affecting charm from the mere fact that it is the past. Armand had never loved poor Helen; he applauded himself for breaking with her as for an action that was most reasonable, regard being had to his own interests, and withal exceedingly meritorious, seeing that he had responded to Alfred's generosity with similar generosity; but neither the grounds of interest nor those of merit could prevent him from thinking with painful emotions of the sweet and dainty mistress who after all had never deceived him except for the purpose of pleasing him the more. To be sure he doubted less than ever that she had had that first intrigue with De Varades at Bourges, of which Lucien Rieume had spoken to him. What more evident token could there have been of this than the manner in which she had received the accusation? Immediately she had bowed her head, and had, as it were, collapsed beneath the insult. But even though he had had two, three, four predecessors, by what right had he been indignant against her? Had she not displayed during their connexion all the loyalty of which such amours are capable? Had she ever manifested so much as a trace of coquetry towards any one? Had she made him jealous for but a single hour, with jealousy such as women of the world, more abandoned in this than abandoned women themselves, do not hesitate to inflict upon a lover, in order to gratify the pettiest impulse of vanity, to please a man who has some claim or other to celebrity or who has merely been noticed by another woman. No, Helen had been perfect towards him. The consciousness of this pleased and at the same time tormented him, for, if she flattered his pride, she also rendered more present to him the faded charm of a love which he had not been able to enjoy at the time when he dreaded its obligations.