In the case of Olivier and Pierre this ideal comradeship had been sacredly cemented. Not only had they been brothers in their dreams, they had been brothers in arms. They were nineteen years of age in 1870. At the first news of the immense national shipwreck both had enlisted. Both had gone through the entire war. The first snowfall of the winter that saw the terrible campaign found them bivouacking upon the banks of the Loire. It was as though this friendship of the two students, now become soldiers in the same battalion, had been heroically baptized. And they had learned to esteem as much as they loved each other as they simply, bravely, obscurely risked their lives side by side. These souvenirs of their youth had remained intact and living in both, but particularly in Olivier. For him they were the only recollections unmixed with bitterness, unsullied by remorse. Before these memories his life had been full of sadness, completely orphaned as he had been early in life and turned over to the guardianship of a horribly selfish uncle. Sensual and jealous, suspicious and despotic as he was, he had only known the bitterness and the pains of love apart from his souvenirs of Pierre. Nothing more is necessary to explain to what a degree this illogical and passionate, this troubled and disillusioned being was moved by the mere idea that a woman had come between his friend and him--and what a woman, if she were Madame de Carlsberg, so hated, despised, condemned by him formerly! Olivier's imagination could only attach itself to two precise facts during the night that followed the arousing of his first suspicions,--a night that was given up to the consideration, one by one, of the possibilities of a love-affair between Ely and Hautefeuille. These were the character of his friend and that of his former mistress. The character of his friend made him fear for him; the character of his former mistress made him fear for her. Upon this latter point also his feelings were very complex. He was convinced that Ely de Carlsberg had had a lover before him, and the idea had tortured him. He was convinced that she had had a lover at the same time with him, and he had left her on account of this idea. He was mistaken, but he was sincere, and had only yielded to proofs of coquetry that appeared sufficiently damaging to convince his jealous nature. This double conviction had left in him a scornful resentment against Ely; had left that inexpiable bitterness which compels us to continually vilify in our mind an image that we despairingly realize can never become entirely indifferent to us. He would have considered a _liaison_ with such a creature a frightful misfortune for any man. What, then, were his feelings when he saw that she had made herself beloved by his friend or that she might make herself beloved?--Having such a prejudiced, violent contempt for this sort of woman, Olivier divined what was really the truth, although it had remained so for so short a time.