“Assuredly, I must have been drunk,” thought he; “that woman must have intoxicated me with caresses. Good heavens! I was a fool and mad! I risked the guillotine in a business like that. Fortunately it passed off all right. But if it had to be done again, I would not do it.” Laurent lost all his vigor. He became inactive, and more cowardly and prudent than ever. He grew fat and flabby. No one who had studied this great body, piled up in a lump, apparently without bones or muscles, would ever have had the idea of accusing the man of violence and cruelty. He resumed his former habits. For several months, he proved himself a model clerk, doing his work with exemplary brutishness. At night, he took his meal at a cheap restaurant in the Rue Saint-Victor, cutting his bread into thin slices, masticating his food slowly, making his repast last as long as possible. When it was over, he threw himself back against the wall and smoked his pipe. Anyone might have taken him for a stout, good-natured father. In the daytime, he thought of nothing; at night, he reposed in heavy sleep free from dreams. With his face fat and rosy, his belly full, his brain empty, he felt happy. His frame seemed dead, and Thérèse barely entered his mind. Occasionally he thought of her as one thinks of a woman one has to marry later on, in the indefinite future. He patiently awaited the time for his marriage, forgetful of the bride, and dreaming of the new position he would then enjoy. He would leave his office, he would paint for amusement, and saunter about hither and thither. These hopes brought him night after night, to the shop in the arcade, in spite of the vague discomfort he experienced on entering the place. One Sunday, with nothing to do and being bored, he went to see his old school friend, the young painter he had lived with for a time. The artist was working on a picture of a nude Bacchante sprawled on some drapery. The model, lying with her head thrown back and her torso twisted sometimes laughed and threw her bosom forward, stretching her arms. As Laurent smoked his pipe and chatted with his friend, he kept his eyes on the model. He took the woman home with him that evening and kept her as his mistress for many months. The poor girl fell in love with him. Every morning she went off and posed as a model all day. Then she came back each evening. She didn’t cost Laurent a penny, keeping herself out of her own earnings. Laurent never bothered to find out about her, where she went, what she did. She was a steadying influence in his life, a useful and necessary thing. He never wondered if he loved her and he never considered that he was being unfaithful to Thérèse. He simply felt better and happier.