She smiled. Poor humanity, clutching at its morsel of happiness and seeing it unceasingly, unceasingly escaping, tries to conclude a pact with blind nature, which it creates in its own image. "In my image? This envious, rapacious, cruel nature. Is it posable that I resemble it? Who knows? Who can say, 'I am not that'?" IX Annette was ruined. She could not yet estimate the extent of her ruin. But when the first moment of aberration had passed, when she coldly examined the situation, she had to admit that she thoroughly deserved it. She was quite capable of attending to her affairs. Like her father, she had a good hard head; figures had no terrors for her. When one comes of a line of peasants and shrewd, energetic tradesfolk, one must make an actual effort to lose one's assurance in practical matters. But she had been spared all thought about material things as long as her father was alive; and since then she had passed through a long crisis in which the inner travail of her emotional life had held her captive. In this rather abnormal state, maintained by the idleness made possible by her fortune, she had felt a rather unhealthy disgust at paying any attention to her property. It should be said boldly that the idealism of the inner life which despises money as parasitical forgets that it has the right to do so only when it gives up money. The idealism that grows out of a soil of wealth and professes to have no interest in it is the worst form of parasitism. To escape from the boredom of managing her fortune, she had turned the whole administration of it over to the excellent M. Grenu, her lawyer. An old family friend, a respected man whose honor and professional standing were well known, M. Grenu had for thirty years overseen all the Rivières' affairs as they passed through his office. It was true that Raoul had not allowed any one to manage them without consulting him. However much confidence he may have placed in his lawyer, he never allowed him to make out a deed without verifying every period and comma himself. But after taking all precautions, he did have confidence in him, and when a man of his shrewdness has confidence in another the other must deserve it. M. Grenu did deserve it. As much as anybody in the world (when the precautions were taken) . . .