There is, in the dawn of a lover's happiness, a moment of tranquil beatitude, when the most penetrating observer would have difficulty in detecting the secret on the surface. The desire to see and speak to each other every hour seems to disappear with the anxious longing to reach an understanding. When their hearts are bound together by a mutual avowal, neither witnesses nor separation can embarrass them or part them in reality. Thus the clear-sighted Janille was deceived by their peaceful merriment and by the prudence which comes only when suffering and doubt are at an end. The perturbation which Janille had often noticed in young Cardonnet, the sudden flush that rose to Gilberte's cheeks at certain words of which she alone had grasped the meaning, her sadness and her ill-designed agitation when he was late in coming, all had vanished since the trip to Crozant, and Janille was amazed that an incident the consequences of which she had dreaded had caused a favorable change in the state of affairs. "I was mistaken," she said to herself. "My girl is not thinking too much about him; and if he thinks of her, he will know enough to say nothing, and draw back little by little, rather than endanger our repose. He is behaving well, and it would be a pity to hurt his feelings, since he understood me with half a word, and is carrying out my wishes of his own accord." If Jean Jappeloup had conspired with Emile to take vengeance on Galuchet for his pretensions, he could have done no better than he did; for during more than an hour, while the lovers were strolling about with Janille in the neighborhood of the pavilion, he employed sometimes cunning raillery, sometimes open force to keep him at the table and make him drink, _willy-nilly_. In this test, which was beyond his strength, Galuchet soon lost the little good sense with which nature had endowed him. He was much scandalized at first by the châtelain's habits and conceived a profound contempt for him whom he regarded as the count's companion in debauchery. In a word, Galuchet, who had no trace of elevation in his feelings or his ideas, and who was not worth a single hair from the heads of those two rough-spoken worthies, deemed himself degraded, and promised himself that he would, in his report to his master, depict in startling colors the painful task he had undertaken. But, as he drank, his wits went astray altogether, his vulgar instincts gained the upper hand of his secret vanity, and he began to laugh, to pound on the table, to talk loud, to boast of innumerable feats of valor, and to make such a pitiful exhibition of himself, that Jappeloup, who was as refined as his manners were abrupt, took compassion on him and gave him a severe lecture with a cold and serious air.