Alfred had on this point preserved the impressions received in his own family, impressions which no experience had corrected; for very chaste men are like very virtuous women, and no one reposes in them those confidences which illuminate the unclean depths of life, the grossness hidden beneath sentimental phraseology, the sensual egotism dissembled beneath the hypocrisy of pretences. The notion of suspecting Helen of having a lover could no more occur to him than the notion of suspecting her of theft or forgery, and much less the notion that she had for lover De Querne, his own companion in childhood. Towards the latter he entertained a feeling of friendship all the more intense that there was blended with it an element of admiration. When they were studying on the same form at school, he used to look at him, and the refinement of Armand's manners, his beauty, his intellect, his halo of social superiority, inspired him with a sort of fetichism. Himself so modest, so hard-working, so akin to the people, he had vaguely considered his friend as a being of a somewhat different species; and when a very clear vision of a difference of this kind produces neither hatred nor envy, it gives birth to an almost blind enthusiasm. Never had Chazel judged De Querne. He had become so habituated to taking him as he was, that he did not even ask himself what manner of friendship Armand was giving him in return for his own. When they had separated, and the young baron used to send about two hastily scribbled pages in reply to the interminable letters from his old companion, the latter would say to himself: "Armand is very fond of me, but it is wearisome to him to write. It is only natural. He is such an agreeable fellow, and so much sought after;" and this was all the complaint of an excellent heart that was ever deceived by a trifling exhibition of sympathy. At every visit that he paid to Paris he met with the same reception from Armand--a clasp of the hand, an invitation to luncheon, to dinner, to the theatre. These tokens of comradeship, at once indifferent and cordial, appeared to him proofs of loyal affection. Not having observed Armand any more than, once married, he was to observe his wife, he could not measure the depth of the abyss which from year to year yawned still wider between his old classmate and himself. He knew not how to recognise the visible signs of radical indifference: the absolute dumbness of the young baron respecting himself, his looks of inattention during their conversations.