This second letter was useless and unworthy of herself. But to give free course to her rage against Olivier was to give relief to her passion for his friend. Besides--for in stirring up the depths of our nature suffering arouses that vague foundation of hope that remains with us in spite of the deepest despair--was it not possible that Olivier, when he once saw how infamously he had acted, would go to his friend and say: "It was not true; I lied when I told you she had been my mistress"? This whirlwind of mad ideas, vain rage, and senseless hypotheses was shattered and driven away by an event as brutal as the first. Ely sent the letter to Olivier by one of her footmen about seven o'clock. Half an hour later, when she was finishing her toilet in a fever of anxiety, the man brought back the reply. It was a large sealed envelope with her address written in Olivier's handwriting. Inside was her letter unopened. The two friends had thus made a compact. They both insulted her in the same way! It was as plain to her as though she had seen them take each other's hand and swear a pact of alliance against her in the name of their friendship. For the first time this woman, usually superior to all the pettiness of her sex, felt against their friendship all the unreasoning hate that the ordinary mistress has for even the simple companionships of her lover. She felt that instinctive impulse of feminine antipathy for sentiments purely masculine, and from which the woman feels excluded forever. During the hours following the double insult, Ely was not only a woman in love repulsed and disdained, a woman who loses with him she loves all joy in life, a woman who will die of the effect of her loss. She was not only this, she also suffered all the pangs of a devouring jealousy. She was jealous of Olivier, jealous of the affection he inspired in Pierre and that Pierre returned. In the despair that the certainty of the cruel desertion caused her, she felt mingled an additional pang of suffering at the idea that these two men were happy in the triumph of their fraternal tenderness, that they dwelt under the same roof, that they could talk with each other, that they esteemed each other, loved each other. True, such impressions were out of conformity with her innate magnanimity. But extreme sufferings have one trait in common: they distort the natural feelings and sentiments. The most delicate nature becomes brutal, the most confiding loses the noble power of expansion, the most loving becomes misanthropic when in the grasp of a great grief. There is no more ill-founded prejudice than the one echoed in the famous line-- "Man is an apprentice; suffering, his master." It may be a master, but it is a degrading, depraving master. Not to be corrupted by suffering one must accept the trial as a punishment and a redemption. And then it is not the suffering that ameliorates one, but faith!