Profiting by the interposition of this enlightening remark, M. d’Amberlard thought it time to unburden himself of a protest which he had been keeping back with difficulty for some time. “All our regrets can make no change,” he said, “and we might as well talk about something more cheerful. When I was in Paris I always used to ask if a play ended happily before I took seats for it. A party, like a comedy, should avoid all gloomy subjects.” The Marquis de Lavernay quite agreed with this, and so death was forgotten. Champagne filled the gilded glasses. Flowers spread their perfume over the table which was laden with baskets of preserved fruits. The jewels of the women sparkled in the lights. It was a pleasure to recover the former luxurious and comfortable atmosphere which the unhappy news had disturbed. Alice and Isabelle were left alone in their distress. The guests all drank the health of the young de Marthenay couple, whose wedding anniversary was being celebrated, and a move was made to the drawing-room. Alice, unable to bear it any longer, rushed to her mother’s room. In the darkness she gave way to her grief. She had been able to smile bravely during the toast they had drunk in her honor, with its allusion to her “enviable happiness.” Her happiness! She had looked in vain for it both in the present and in the past, and how could she expect it in the future? With the clear sight which the great shocks of destiny give us when we expect the bitterness of life to crush us, she lived again despairingly through the last years of her life. In a rapid succession of vivid pictures she saw her sad days pass before her eyes. She had not wished to marry Armand de Marthenay: it was so constantly forced upon her that at last she had yielded. She came down the aisle of the church in her wedding dress on the arm of the husband she had not chosen. And since then? Could she look back upon one hour of joy, that deep, pure joy that her childish soul had imagined? The first days of her married life had been deadened by a kind of merciful stupor, like a fog which hides the desolation of a blasted plain. She forgot to feel she had a heart. Her husband still retained the good humor of a man with something to do. He rode, he fulfilled his military duties, he received his friends, he got up parties. She allowed herself to be occupied by her new household duties and by the many society calls. Instead of the husband of her dreams, she had a companion proud of her fortune and her pretty face, a man without much delicacy of feeling and with no great intelligence, not even clever, but possessed of a good digestion and an idiotic fatuity which enabled him to admire himself unceasingly all his life. When her little girl was born she thought she had at last found the oblivion for which at times she still sought.