Marie Louise's letter came as an untimely interruption in his sorrow. For six months or perhaps a year, his thoughts had never been so far from his own family, who had selected a very bad time to come to him. Why did they worry him in his solitude? He could not ignore this call, but it was against his will to reply to it. He asked for Mme. Derize at the boarding house. He was shown into the drawing-room on the ground floor, which overlooked Saint Germain-des-Prés, whose pointed steeple and old gray stones he could see between the branches of the chestnuts, already in full bloom. It was a peaceful retreat from the noise of Paris. Elizabeth sent her two children in as scouts. How could he receive them badly? Marie Louise told him about the visit to the doctor, and Philippe informed him of his interest in the botanical gardens. When, in her turn, his wife appeared, with a dismayed expression, he cruelly assumed his unresponsive manner. "She knows I am deserted," he thought with irritation. "She is coming to seek me. She is triumphant." In seeing him again she experienced neither exaltation nor the hope of departure. She was conscious of that impression of failure which all know, who, full of their subject and eager to express it, meet with indifference or hostility; their tongues are no longer persuasive, and their words grow weak. She explained this journey as well as she could. Although he evidenced that he was distant and that this intrusion into his life displeased him, he was more struck than he showed with the change he saw in Elizabeth's features and the thinness of her body. One would have thought, with her flexibility and pallor which made her appear taller, that she was going to break at the slightest blow of fate. He was angry with her for that frailty which attracted him irresistibly, and at the same time alarmed him. In his masculine selfishness, still making her suffer, and already foreseeing her in his future, he preferred her to be faithful at a distance. After a few insignificant words, he could not refrain from asking her: "Have you been ill?" "Yes," interrupted Marie Louise. "The doctor scolded her." "Not at all," answered the young woman. "I am quite well." She sent her children to play at the other end of the room, but the little girl often came back to them. With his bitter tone he put her at variance with herself: "You refused to receive me last month in Grenoble and you come to surprise me here." Confusedly, she murmured: "The circumstances are not the same now." "What circumstances?"