He briefly summed up his day, repeating almost verbatim the words of the petition to the President of the Court, and when he came to the account of his visit to the Molay-Norrois, he tried to explain the motive which was actuating Elizabeth, who was suffering from the injustice of fate, and intended to base her case on the truth. Albert, who until then, had listened in silence, jumped up at these last words: "The truth? Does she want the truth? Very well, I will tell it too. We shall bring to light our home life." Philippe was amazed at this sudden anger: "With what have you to reproach her?" "I? Nothing and everything. Does one encounter in life only serious events, capable of exact limitation and definition? The greatest misfortunes are not the hardest to bear. Listen, in my loneliness--I am speaking of my home,--I have noted down from day to day my impressions of those last years. It happens that I have brought those books with me. Here they are; I shall leave them with you. You will find some causes there. I shall complete them. You will tell everything to the Court, since she wishes the truth. And I am going to contend for our children." "I have just seen them," said the lawyer, as he took the books. "They are quite well." With a decided movement, Albert stopped his friend as if to tell him that this subject belonged only to him: "I know." Philippe Lagier, who was going to plead their cause, realized the inefficacy of any interference. The restless forehead, the hard look in the eyes, the distressed and absorbed expression of the face, showed traces of that passion about which Albert was silent. And this refusal to speak of it implied a rare force of concentration on the same object. Every confidence is a diminution: it abstracts a spark of that divine fire with which the soul wishes to be filled. Anne de Sézery invisible, was there, in that room, present and dominant. "It is definite? You will not be reconciled with Elizabeth?" "Never!" Elizabeth had given expression to the same final decree. There was nothing further to be done but to let the law take its course. "And I am going to ask for a divorce," said Albert. "And since they wish to compromise her, I shall marry her." He stopped short without mentioning her name. In his books he had often called attention to the importance of family ties, and, like his master Auguste Comte, to the value of indissoluble marriage: what authority would he have henceforth to defend such historical conclusions? He continued: "There remains the question of financial arrangements. My wife will naturally undertake the administration of her own fortune. I have already asked our lawyer to make it over to her, and I shall give my children one thousand francs a month until the courts restore them to me--for at least a part of each year." "If you remarry, the courts will not give them back to you."