“Yes, I do,” said Lisbeth.  “The unexpressed factor is part of my revenge; what can I do?  I am working it out.”

“I love Wenceslas so that I am positively growing thin, and I can never see him,” said Valerie, throwing up her arms.  “Hulot asks him to dinner, and my artist declines.  He does not know that I idolize him, the wretch!  What is his wife after all?  Fine flesh!  Yes, she is handsome, but I—­I know myself—­I am worse!”

“Be quite easy, my child, he will come,” said Lisbeth, in the tone of a nurse to an impatient child.  “He shall.”

“But when?”

“This week perhaps.”

“Give me a kiss.”

As may be seen, these two women were but one.  Everything Valerie did, even her most reckless actions, her pleasures, her little sulks, were decided on after serious deliberation between them.

Lisbeth, strangely excited by this harlot existence, advised Valerie on every step, and pursued her course of revenge with pitiless logic.  She really adored Valerie; she had taken her to be her child, her friend, her love; she found her docile, as Creoles are, yielding from voluptuous indolence; she chattered with her morning after morning with more pleasure than with Wenceslas; they could laugh together over the mischief they plotted, and over the folly of men, and count up the swelling interest on their respective savings.

Indeed, in this new enterprise and new affection, Lisbeth had found food for her activity that was far more satisfying than her insane passion for Wenceslas.  The joys of gratified hatred are the fiercest and strongest the heart can know.  Love is the gold, hatred the iron of the mine of feeling that lies buried in us.  And then, Valerie was, to Lisbeth, Beauty in all its glory—­the beauty she worshiped, as we worship what we have not, beauty far more plastic to her hand than that of Wenceslas, who had always been cold to her and distant.

At the end of nearly three years, Lisbeth was beginning to perceive the progress of the underground mine on which she was expending her life and concentrating her mind.  Lisbeth planned, Madame Marneffe acted.  Madame Marneffe was the axe, Lisbeth was the hand the wielded it, and that hand was rapidly demolishing the family which was every day more odious to her; for we can hate more and more, just as, when we love, we love better every day.

Love and hatred are feelings that feed on themselves; but of the two, hatred has the longer vitality.  Love is restricted within limits of power; it derives its energies from life and from lavishness.  Hatred is like death, like avarice; it is, so to speak, an active abstraction, above beings and things.

Lisbeth, embarked on the existence that was natural to her, expended in it all her faculties; governing, like the Jesuits, by occult influences.  The regeneration of her person was equally complete; her face was radiant.  Lisbeth dreamed of becoming Madame la Marechale Hulot.