At six years of age, she began to torture Colombel. He was small and delicate. She would take him to the bottom of the garden, under the chestnut trees, and, jumping on his back would make him carry her. He was the horse, she was the lady. When, dizzy, he seemed ready to fall, she would bite his ear, clinging to him with such fury that she would sink her nails into his flesh. Later, in the presence of her parents, she would pinch him and forbid his crying out under pain of being thrown out into the street. They thus had a sort of secret existence, their attitude when alone together changing in company. When they were alone, she treated him like a plaything, with a desire to break him. And as she wearied of reigning over him only when they were alone, she added the pleasure of giving him a kick or pricking him with a pin while in company at the same time fixing him with her somber eyes and daring him to so much as twitch. Colombel bore that martyr's existence with dumb revolts that left him trembling, his eyes lowered, with a desire to strangle his young mistress. But, he was of a sly and vindictive nature. It did not altogether displease him to be beaten; he immediately gloated in his rancor. He would avenge himself by falling on the stones, dragging Therese with him, so that he would escape injury and she would be scratched and bruised. If he did not cry out when she pinched or pricked him, it was because he wished no one to interfere between them. It was their own affair,--a quarrel from which he intended to issue the conqueror later on. Meanwhile, the marquis was worried about the violent conduct of his daughter. He considered it his duty to submit her to a rigid education. So, he placed her in a convent, hoping that the discipline would soften her nature. She remained there until her eighteenth year. When Therese returned home, she was very well-behaved and very tall. Her parents were pleased to note in her a profound piety. The marquis and the marquise, secluded for fifteen years in the big house, prepared to open the drawing-room again. They gave several dinners to the nobility of the neighborhood; they had dancing. Their design was to marry Therese. And, in spite of her coldness, she made herself very agreeable. She adorned herself and she waltzed, but always with a face so pale that the young men who thought of falling in love with her were uneasy. Therese had never mentioned little Colombel. The marquis had taken an interest in him, and, after giving him a schooling, had placed him in M. Savournin's office. One day, Françoise led her son up to Therese and presented to the young girl her comrade of former days. Colombel was smiling, very clean, and without a sign of embarrassment. Therese looked at him calmly, said she remembered him, and turned her back.