After she had emptied her trunks and made herself at home in her room, Madame de Précy found plenty of time for reflection. Nature offers to those who at a moral crisis fly to her, many consolations. By a sort of reflex action, she deadens pain, soothes and cheers. Her immutability, her apparent egotism, are good advisers. Before her who does not pass away one learns to see that everything else will do so, our little happinesses as well as our great sorrows; and the order which in everything she observes incites us to order also our hearts and minds. Madame de Précy began to think, and more seriously than for many and many a long day before. She reviewed her entire past life, beginning with the first white pages of cradle, dolls, first communion, long skirts and balls, next turning to the chapter of marriage. Her life had not been a romance, scarcely even a story, but very ordinary, without great joys, great catastrophes, or anything striking. Every night she had gone to bed with the secret hope that the next day something might happen. During the nine years of her married life, the sun had risen many times, but never had anything happened. Little by little she and her husband had become embittered, and perhaps he also, without being willing to admit it, had suffered from that monotony to some beings so irritating--monotony of things, hours, events, crimes, heroisms, vices, seasons, rain, sun, admirations, and anticipations. Her husband was not a man to be despised: cultivated, distinguished, honorable, sometimes (only sometimes) tender-hearted--in fact, admirable--yet impossible to live with. So, while deploring her fate, in the bloom of youth finding herself thus alone and in a false position, she did not, however, regret the impulse to which she had yielded. She would not know happiness, but she could have peace. One can not expect everything at once. Without feeling that her dignity was compromised, she gladly accepted the society of Madame Bénard, the old housekeeper in charge of the château, and yet, as a rule, she was haughty. But Madame Bénard had brought up Monsieur de Précy, and then the country equalizes; its solitude brings together human beings, raising a little those who are below, and lowering a little those who are above, so that Madame de Précy and the good old lady--for a lady she really was--soon became friends.