The most diverse influences, therefore, combined to bring Madame de Carlsberg again into conflict with her husband at the moment she was passing through a crisis of such profound sorrow that she was incapable of forethought and of self-defence, or even of observation. She often thought about this morning later, and of the whirl of circumstances in which it seemed as though neither Pierre nor Olivier nor herself could be dragged, a rush of circumstances which had carried her away in the first place, and had then reached the two young men. That Chésy had stupidly ruined himself on the Bourse; that Brion was ready to profit by his ruin to seduce poor Yvonne; that this latter woman resembled feature by feature Marsh's dead daughter, and that this identity of physiognomy interested the Nabob of Marionville to such an extent that he was determined upon the most romantic and the most practical form of charity; that Verdier had made a discovery of an immense value to industry, and that Marsh was trying to gain the benefit of this invention by the surest means in giving his niece as a wife to the young scientist; that Andryana and Corancez were waiting for an opportunity to make their astounding secret marriage public,--were only so many facts differing with those concerning her own life, facts which appeared to have never touched her, save indirectly. And yet each of these stories had some bearing, as though by prearrangement, upon the step that she was about to take, acting on the advice of Corancez. This step itself was to prepare an unexpected dénouement, a terrible dénouement for the moral tragedy in which she had plunged without any hope of ever issuing. This game of events, widely separate from each other, which gives to the believer the soothing certainty of a supreme justice, inflicts on us, on the contrary, an impression of vertigo when, without faith, we notice the astounding unexpectedness of certain encounters. How many times did Ely not ask herself what would have been the future of her passion after the interview of Olivier with Pierre, if she had not gone upon the _Jenny_ that day to render a service to Yvonne, if Marsh had not asked her to bring about a reconciliation between Verdier and Florence, and, finally, if the marriage of Andryana and Corancez had not been announced to the Archduke under conditions that seemed like bravado, and which only increased his exasperation and bitterness. These are vain hypotheses, but they are felt bitterly by those who give themselves up to the childish work of rebuilding their life in thought. It seems a manifestation of the irresistible nature of fate.