One especially came before him--one whose conquest had not been effected for the flattering of his fatuity, for she was but a girl was Aline, who had died of consumption in the autumn of 1880. He could again see her with her hollow eyes, her delicate cheek, and the blending of native purity and corruption that was in her. He could see her nursing a little sister whom she had taken to be with her, a child four years of age. What affecting kindliness in vice, and what innocence in infamy! Yes, Aline loved him, although she had three or four other lovers at the same time as himself. His chief pleasure used to consist in taking this pretty, ruined creature into the country to enjoy the childish outbreaks of rusticity that prompted her to pick flowers, to listen to the birds, to lean upon his arm, as though she had never exercised her hideous profession. What a mysterious thing is memory! He was on the eve of his first assignation with Helen, and here he was growing tender over poor Aline, evoking her as she was when he had so often sought her in her rooms in the Rue de Moscow; as she was at certain moments when he had loved or nearly loved her--on a summer evening, for instance, when she was seated in the stern of a boat rowed on the Seine by four oarsmen of their acquaintance. Yes, she was seated in a bright dress, looking at him over the heads of the youths as they alternately stooped and rose. A stillness was falling upon the river. A fine of orange was trailing along the margin of the sky. What unspeakable emotion had bathed his soul as he was sensible of the passing hour, the quivering water, the living creature, and the dying light! He ascended his staircase with these thoughts. Why this fatal incompleteness in all his passions? Why was he incapable of attaining to that absolute of tenderness which he conceived, of which he had glimpses, towards which he sprang at every new intrigue? And then--nothing! And yet how many chances had been combined for him; and while his servant was relieving him of his overcoat, and he was passing into the drawing-room, in which he often read at night before going to bed, he mentally enumerated these chances: a fortune which enabled him to pursue his fancies without much need of calculation; a genuine and ancient title; ability to maintain a position in society that pleased him; a robustness of health that could not recall a week of sickness; a taste for intellectual things just sufficient to occupy his attention without annoyance, for, absolutely free from personal ambition, he had never ceased to be interested as an amateur by the attractions of literature and art.