Thérèse studied his tastes and his caprices, and was surprised to find them easy to satisfy. Laurent was greedy of diversion and of surprises; it was not necessary to take him among scenes of enchantment that could never exist in real life; it was enough to take him no matter where, and provide some amusement for him which he did not expect. If, instead of giving him a dinner at home, Thérèse informed him, putting on her hat the while, that they were to dine together at a restaurant, and if she suddenly asked him to take her to an entirely different sort of play from the one to which she had previously asked him to take her, he was overjoyed by that unexpected diversion and took the keenest pleasure in it; whereas, if they simply carried out a plan marked out beforehand, he was certain to feel an insurmountable distaste for it and a disposition to sneer at everything. So Thérèse treated him as a convalescent child, to whom one refuses nothing, and she chose to pay no heed to the resultant inconveniences to which she was subjected. The first and most serious was the danger of compromising her reputation. She was commonly said to be, and known to be, virtuous. Everybody was not convinced that she had never had any other lover than Laurent; indeed, some person having reported that she had been seen in Italy years before with the Comte de ----, who had a wife in America, she was supposed to have been kept by the man whom she had actually married, and we have seen that Thérèse preferred to endure that blot upon her fame rather than engage in a scandalous contest with the miserable wretch whom she had loved; but every one was agreed in considering her a prudent and sensible woman. "She keeps up appearances," people said; "there is never any rivalry or scandal about her; all her friends respect her and speak well of her. She is a clever woman, and seeks nothing more than to pass unnoticed; which fact adds to her merit." When she was seen away from home, on Laurent's arm, people began to be surprised, and the blame was all the more severe because she had kept clear of it so long. Laurent's talent was highly esteemed by artists generally, but he had very few real friends among them. They took it ill of him that he played the gentleman with fashionable young men of another class, and, on the other hand, his friends in that other class could not understand his conversion and did not believe in it. So that Thérèse's fond and devoted love was regarded as a frenzied caprice. Would a chaste woman have chosen for her lover, in preference to all the serious men of her acquaintance, the only one who had led a dissolute life with all the vilest harlots in Paris? And, in the eyes of those who did not choose to condemn Thérèse, Laurent's violent passion seemed to be simply a successful piece of lechery, of which he was shrewd enough to shake himself clear when he was weary of it.