The mother
and daughter paid for three thanksgiving masses, and prayed to God to
suffer them to keep the husband and father He had restored to them.
One evening Victorin Hulot, seeing his father retire for the night,
said to his mother:
"Well, we are at any rate so far happy that my father has come back to
us. My wife and I shall never regret our capital if only this lasts--"
"Your father is nearly seventy," said the Baroness. "He still thinks
of Madame Marneffe, that I can see; but he will forget her in time. A
passion for women is not like gambling, or speculation, or avarice;
there is an end to it."
But Adeline, still beautiful in spite of her fifty years and her
sorrows, in this was mistaken. Profligates, men whom Nature has gifted
with the precious power of loving beyond the limits ordinarily set to
love, rarely are as old as their age.
During this relapse into virtue Baron Hulot had been three times to
the Rue du Dauphin, and had certainly not been the man of seventy. His
rekindled passion made him young again, and he would have sacrificed
his honor to Valerie, his family, his all, without a regret. But
Valerie, now completely altered, never mentioned money, not even the
twelve hundred francs a year to be settled on their son; on the
contrary, she offered him money, she loved Hulot as a woman of
six-and-thirty loves a handsome law-student--a poor, poetical, ardent
boy. And the hapless wife fancied she had reconquered her dear Hector!
The fourth meeting between this couple had been agreed upon at the end
of the third, exactly as formerly in Italian theatres the play was
announced for the next night.
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