This man's hell began. Placed between his jealousy and his love, he hesitated between the desire to draw his connexion with Madame de Hansfeld more closely through the introduction of Bertha, and the fear of seeing his wife surrounded by admirers. The thought of being jealous of the prince, whom he only knew from the description of his singularities, did not occur to him for a moment; but independently of him, he conjured up a host of fearful phantoms, or rather attractive adorers. Already he saw himself mocked at, pointed at with the finger; he who had made a marriage of love, ridiculous as it was, as he said to himself,--he who had sacrificed his vanity, his ambition, his cupidity, to a poor obscure girl, was not to be safe from a painful destiny! Was he to be always a dupe in the eyes of the world, as well after as before his marriage? At these thoughts De Brévannes shook with passion. Now he saw in Bertha's frankness a guarantee for the future; now, on the contrary, he saw a kind of cynic defiance, until at last he was so actually alarmed at the language of a virtuous woman, who, disdained by her husband, whom she no longer loved, was at length disabused as to human frailty, and preferred avoiding, to confronting, danger. Still not to introduce Bertha to the princess was to renounce a future which he contemplated as so brilliant. The sacrifice was impossible, and like those who, despairing of making themselves beloved, hope to make themselves feared, he attempted to intimidate Bertha, and said to her brutally,-- "When a woman has the effrontery to profess such principles openly, madame, she has no need to go into the world to deceive her husband." "Enough, sir, enough," said Bertha proudly; "since you interpret me thus I have nothing to add. I will accompany you when you please to the Princess de Hansfeld." "And be on your guard as to what you do; at least, remember this--and I repeat it designedly to you--love may be indulgent, generous; pride, never; and as I should be pitiless towards you if you have the bad taste to conduct yourself improperly, so I will crush you, break you to atoms without remorse. So mind," he added, with lips contracted by passion, and taking Bertha rudely by the arm. His wife very calmly disengaged herself and replied to him,-- "With any one but me, sir, you would, perhaps, be wrong in thus contrasting the attraction of danger to the attraction which love may offer. Believe me, when the respect of duty is powerless, terror is but vain." And with these words Bertha quitted the room, leaving M. de Brévannes in a state of extreme irritation and intense anxiety. CHAPTER XXXVIII CORRESPONDENCE