"They were married. Their moderate fortunes joined together became, in the hands of the intelligent young woman, a source of honest and almost luxurious comfort. Their apartment was large, light and sunny, the food carefully chosen; and instead of looking forward to the ennui of a lonely single bed, he enjoyed the constant presence of a beloved being who tinted with rose and blue the hours formerly gloomy with lonely awakenings.
"He no longer had time to scorn men or to relish their low greediness; pleasure of love, enjoyed in full naïveté, evoked no lewd images in his desires, no horror of self or of others; what others?
"Happy! He! He the stubborn pessimist, he whose aversion to every ideal had astonished the most impotent! Happy! what a shame! He plunged to the depths of the abyss in which this adventure had overwhelmed his principles; he brought them back one by one; ah! they were rotting; all was ended and with them all joy of living--for he had just understood how much the wretchedness of a mediocre existence, how much the sentiment of the universal dunghill, was necessary to his happiness!"
"Ως ἧν έν άεχἥ" _Greek Liturgy_. "Man, meditate on the syllable Om." _The Khandogya Upanishad_.
Hubert wrote two notes, and the evening of the second day knocked at Sixtine's door. Absence. A third note and another visit were likewise in vain.
"She is sulking," he thought. "So much the better. Her anger will exhaust itself against my shadow and, when she condescends to receive me, her beautiful face will be free of all vexation."
He was too assured of virtual possession even to suppose an attempt to fly from his hands. By imaginary advances, realized in desire, the union was established for ever. All scorn was impossible: she had breathed the fragrance of the philter.
Far from grieving, he congratulated himself; far from languishing, he breathed more deeply the invigorating breezes of certitude. Having achieved peace with himself, having thrown his pride overboard, his lightened bark now moving spiritedly towards the haven of golden sands, he would enter at the propitious hour.
The morning of the fourth day, he received news in this form:
"Please do not forget the soirée of the Countess on Wednesday next. This on her behalf.