On that first afternoon of his compulsory seclusion, in order not to abandon himself to discouragement, he tried to concentrate his thoughts upon the plan of that existence _à deux_, wherein he would find, if not happiness, at least a balm for the smarting wound open forever in his heart. He looked on his shelves for books relating to the different French provinces, in order to study the conditions of an establishment in the country. That was what he looked forward to--a life of retirement on a large estate, at a distance from Paris, with all that an extensive rural undertaking represents in the way of profitable activity. But ere nightfall the inward silence was broken and the tempest of ideas swept down upon him anew. He had been for years too zealous an officer not to feel a certain remorse, which was sure to increase upon reflection, for having been governed, throughout the incident of that morning, by motives so entirely unconnected with the military service. He had transformed an act in the line of his duty into an episode of his personal, sentimental life. That was a much more serious offence, from the professional point of view, than the breach of discipline. He would not have felt remorse if he had had, for refusing to act, the motives of a Despois, the subordination of military law to religious law, which latter such men regard as primordial and imprescriptible. He, Landri, had acted upon impulse. He had not even been governed by the argument he had used upon himself from the first day--that of a debt that he owed the Claviers-Grandchamps. Had he, in truth, acted at all? He had been acted upon, in the literal meaning of the words. The marquis's powerful personality had, as it were, prevailed with him from afar.