Camors professed for him and for his solemn airs an utter contempt, which he did not always take the trouble to conceal; and Vautrot trembled when some burning sarcasm fell from such a height on the old wound of his vanity--that wound which was ever sore within him. What he hated most in Camors was his easy and insolent triumph--his rapid and unmerited fortune--all those enjoyments which life yielded him without pain, without toil, without conscience--peacefully tasted! But what he hated above all, was that this man had thus obtained these things while he had vainly striven for them. Assuredly, in this Vautrot was not an exception. The same example presented to a healthier mind would not have been much more salutary, for we must tell those who, like M. de Camors, trample under foot all principles of right, and nevertheless imagine that their secretaries, their servants, their wives and their children, may remain virtuous-- we must tell these that while they wrong others they deceive themselves! And this was the case with Hippolyte Vautrot. He was about forty years of age--a period of life when men often become very vicious, even when they have been passably virtuous up to that time. He affected an austere and puritanical air; was the great man of the cafe he frequented; and there passed judgment on his contemporaries and pronounced them all inferior. He was difficult to please--in point of virtue demanding heroism; in talent, genius; in art, perfection. His political opinions were those of Erostratus, with this difference-- always in favor of the ancient--that Vautrot, after setting fire to the temple, would have robbed it also. In short, he was a fool, but a vicious fool as well. If M. de Camors, at the moment of leaving his luxurious study that evening, had had the bad taste to turn and apply his eye to the keyhole, he would have seen something greatly to astonish even him. He would have seen this "honorable man" approach a beautiful Italian cabinet inlaid with ivory, turn over the papers in the drawers, and finally open in the most natural manner a very complicated lock, the key of which the Count at that moment had in his pocket. It was after this search that M. Vautrot repaired with his volume of Faust to the boudoir of the young Countess, at whose feet we have already left him too long. CHAPTER XVII LIGHTNING FROM A CLEAR SKY Madame de Camors had closed her eyes to conceal her tears. She opened them at the instant Vautrot seized her hand and called her "Poor angel!" Seeing the man on his knees, she could not comprehend it, and only exclaimed, simply: "Are you mad, Vautrot?" "Yes, I am mad!" Vautrot threw his hair back with a romantic gesture common to him, and, as he believed, to the poets-"Yes, I am mad with love and with pity, for I see your sufferings, pure and noble victim!" The Countess only stared in blank astonishment.