In his fright the Marquis accepted this latter supposition as the less appalling; but another anguish was mingled with it. The Marquis felt himself bruised and irritated by a sentiment which he did not avow to himself, and to which he would not so much as give a name. He set himself to work and worked badly. He went to bed and slept still worse. As for the Duke, he innocently rubbed his hands. "I have succeeded," said he to himself; "I have found the proper reaction against his despair. Poor, dear brother! I have turned his head, I have aroused his feelings, I have excited his jealousy. He is in love. He will be cured, and he will live. For passion there is no remedy but passion. It is not my mother who would have found that out, and if she is opposed to so humble a match, she will forgive me for making it on the day when she shall know that my brother would have died of his regrets and of his constancy." The Duke was not perhaps mistaken, and a wiser man could have been less ingenious. He would have endeavored to lead the Marquis back to an interest in life through the love of letters, through filial affection, through reason and duty,--things which were all excellent, but which the invalid himself had long since vainly called to his aid. Now the Duke, from his point of view, imagined that he had rescued everything, and did not foresee that with an exclusive nature like his brother's, the remedy might soon become worse than the disease. The Duke, knowing human susceptibility through himself, believed in a general susceptibility in women, and admitted no exceptions. According to his ideas, Caroline would not make any struggle at all; he believed her already quite disposed to love the Marquis. "She is a good young woman," he said to himself; "not at all ambitious, and entirely disinterested. I judged her at the first glance, and my mother assures me that I am not mistaken. She will yield through her need to love some one, and through allurement, too, for my brother has great attractions for an intelligent woman. If she resists him awhile, it will be all the better; he will be so much the more attached to her. My mother will see nothing of this, and if she does see it, it will agitate her, it will occupy her too. She will be good, she will preach the requirements of caste, and yield to endearment. These little domestic emotions will rescue her from the tedium which is her greatest torment." To these heartless calculations the Duke gave himself up with perfect candor. He grew tender himself over this sort of puerility which oftentimes characterizes corruption as an exhaustion. He laughed to himself as he regarded the beautiful victim already immolated, in imagination to his projects; and if any one had questioned him on the subject, he would have answered with a laugh, that he was in the act of arranging a romance after the manner of Florian, as a beginning to his contemplated life of sentiment and innocence.