From the moment of his arrival at the chateau he was on the alert. The news of my marriage had burst like a bombshell upon the society we frequented. I had been the target for several of those forward, modern girls who look up a possible husband’s eligibility in advance. What rival in some forgotten corner of the world had snatched me from out of their experienced hands? No one knew anything, no one suspected anything, for my brief letter of invitation explained nothing. Nevertheless, I have learned since, before leaving, he trumpeted forth great news of the event. He had been generally commissioned to investigate my case. After the usual greetings he began the examination at once. “Is she a neighbour in the country here?” “Oh, a very close neighbour,” I replied. “She lives in the lodge which you see.” “At the entrance of the Avenue? Isn’t that part of your estate?” “Certainly, since her father is my superintendent.” In order to be done with it as quickly as possible, I hurled the sentence at him in a single breath, as if it were the confession of a sin. I decidedly was not enjoying the serenity which should have come from the happiness and honour of marrying Raymonde. The presence of a single man was sufficient to cause me one of those little shudders of cowardice and baseness. Nothing suggested a greater menace to my own and Raymonde’s happiness than the troubled way in which I confessed this little fact to Ducal. It proved that I was not cured of my pettiest vanities. Over them my love, born in solitude and nourished and beautified by the clear, fresh influence of my fiancée, temporarily triumphed. It did not destroy them. So many briers prevent the tree of our life from growing, and drain its sap. When Pierre Ducal’s trunks arrived I laughed at their number. “Well, you see,” he said nonchalantly, “I did not know.” Did not know what? In this vague phrase I perceived a painful significance. After a moment he explained: “You see I did not know exactly the character of the ceremony.” “It will be very simple.” “Naturally.” Naturally! I could have boxed his ears. At the same time a host of thoughts, which had not occurred to me during the happy months of my seclusion, beset and assailed me. I breathed again the intoxication of certain successes, I recollected the splendid alliances which had been offered me, I evoked the memory of some mistress whose rouge and whose treachery I had passed over because she carried to perfection the arts of dress and of fencing with words. What a position I might have held in Paris, had I wished! Forgotten impressions, as glittering and as false as the jewelry of a bazaar, impressions which tarnished my youth but had been happily lost during my rides with a pure child in the Sleeping Woods, conquests which had temporarily faded from my memory, these Ducal brought back to me as if they were precious stones that he had recovered.