"Must I be a statue to please you? Am I a statue?" "Your beauty would enchant me," he said, "even if it were not you. Statue, are you made of marble?" "You know I'm not." She called to mind, though the moment seemed most inapposite, her husband's pudicity, his discreet entries into the conjugal chamber, the timidity of his caresses, the decency of his words, and the sudden savagery after his almost brotherly conversation. M. de la Mesangerie had explained to her that the final formality was necessary for the procreation of children. "God," he added, "has so ordered it, and we must bless his divine providence." He seemed to regret the obligation of going so far and, whether through natural or acquired foolishness, or whether through hypocrisy, he encouraged his wife to believe that sensual pleasures were contemptible. "They are," he even said, "a means and not an end." Following these principles, he had deprived her of them as soon as her first child seemed imminent. M. de la Mesangerie was very pious and prided himself on the possession of a most enlightened and methodical religion. "That's the way," she said to herself, as she looped up her hair, "to train up a wife for adultery." Under the pretext of sticking a pin into her hair, she stood admiring herself in front of the glass, and at the same time, at the risk of offending her lover, who shouldn't have doubted the fact, she said, "You're the only person who has seen me like this, you and I...." When Leonor went to sleep she knelt beside his adored body and pious words came to her lips: she had found the living god at last. They had two days. They decided to finish the last hours at Paris and they returned to shut themselves up in a hotel in the Rue de Rivoli. Hortense was indefatigable. "What shall we do to recapture this?" she asked. The idea of taking a little house at Carentan seemed to them a good one. Mme. de la Mesangerie would always have the pretext of going to see her mother at Carquebut; her husband accompanied her there only once a year. "Yes," said Leonor; "there's the time between two trains, one hour; then one misses one train. That makes two hours. Plenty of things can be done in two hours." "Lovers learn the art of using every moment." To Hortense it seemed as though she had begun a new life, her real life. She began consulting time-tables, fitting in her connections. Then she tossed the booklet aside, saying: "Bah! It would be much simpler to get divorced." "Your husband's virtue stands in the way, my dear."