Then, suddenly, a clear intuition rose through the discard of those historical parallels. M. Raindal understood; he explained to himself at last the work of his little pupil ... his professor rather, his little teacher who had, from the first day, little by little, taught him the meaning of a refined existence, material enjoyment, the tangible reality of all those terms which he had in the past carelessly used in the written sentences of his books, as the symbolical pieces of a lifeless chessboard!... Pleasure, love, luxury, elegance, ardor of the senses, beauty, grace, passion, tenderness--these had been to him as so many inert syllables, until Mme. Chambannes brought them to life for him. And the last lesson, the end of this apprenticeship--had it not been completed just now, out there among the high trees where, perhaps, she might still be, enraptured, and forgetting him in the arms of another man!... The hitherto unknown torture with which this vision inflicted him brought an exclamation of horror to his lips. He rose from his bed, blinking. He beat the air with his fists in a sudden threat. For a few minutes, he lost the thread of his meditations. He crumbled down, quite exhausted, in a cretonne armchair; in his mind he was living again his whole career, the succession of those virtuous years whose righteousness had once exalted his pride. How dull and trivial that narrow little path which he had walked at the cost of so much hardship and so many efforts seemed now! It reminded him of one of those out of the way side-paths which one walked, on holidays, to avoid the joy of others.... Near that vision, he dimly perceived, as in an ancient print, the noisy kermesse of Life, singing groups, bouquets, drunken orgies, women with men, the furious exuberance of the mob of revelry.... Meanwhile he was pursuing, apart, his own road and that step by step, seeing only the next day's march when one was completed, applying his efforts merely not to deviate from this path, his zeal not to be diverted.... What cared he whether they enjoyed themselves and lived on the other side? Was he not aware with scientific certainty how vain and vulgar were the pleasures which satisfy the mob? Did he not know that they left nothing but disgust behind them, to what sottishness they brought one down, and finally what a very small thing was Woman (_mulier_) in comparison with a superior mind?...