“Read that,” said he.

The Councillor read these words written in pencil: 

  “I have waited in vain, you old wretch!  A woman of my quality does
  not expect to be kept waiting by a retired perfumer.  There was no
  dinner ordered—­no cigarettes.  I will make you pay for this!”

“Well, is that her writing?”

“Good God!” gasped Hulot, sitting down in dismay.  “I see all the things she uses—­her caps, her slippers.  Why, how long since—?”

Crevel nodded that he understood, and took a packet of bills out of the little inlaid cabinet.

“You can see, old man.  I paid the decorators in December, 1838.  In October, two months before, this charming little place was first used.”

Hulot bent his head.

“How the devil do you manage it?  I know how she spends every hour of her day.”

“How about her walk in the Tuileries?” said Crevel, rubbing his hands in triumph.

“What then?” said Hulot, mystified.

“Your lady love comes to the Tuileries, she is supposed to be airing herself from one till four.  But, hop, skip, and jump, and she is here.  You know your Moliere?  Well, Baron, there is nothing imaginary in your title.”

Hulot, left without a shred of doubt, sat sunk in ominous silence.  Catastrophes lead intelligent and strong-minded men to be philosophical.  The Baron, morally, was at this moment like a man trying to find his way by night through a forest.  This gloomy taciturnity and the change in that dejected countenance made Crevel very uneasy, for he did not wish the death of his colleague.

“As I said, old fellow, we are now even; let us play for the odd.  Will you play off the tie by hook and by crook?  Come!”

“Why,” said Hulot, talking to himself—­“why is it that out of ten pretty women at least seven are false?”

But the Baron was too much upset to answer his own question.  Beauty is the greatest of human gifts for power.  Every power that has no counterpoise, no autocratic control, leads to abuses and folly.  Despotism is the madness of power; in women the despot is caprice.

“You have nothing to complain of, my good friend; you have a beautiful wife, and she is virtuous.”

“I deserve my fate,” said Hulot.  “I have undervalued my wife and made her miserable, and she is an angel!  Oh, my poor Adeline! you are avenged!  She suffers in solitude and silence, and she is worthy of my love; I ought—­for she is still charming, fair and girlish even—­But was there ever a woman known more base, more ignoble, more villainous than this Valerie?”

“She is a good-for-nothing slut,” said Crevel, “a hussy that deserves whipping on the Place du Chatelet.  But, my dear Canillac, though we are such blades, so Marechal de Richelieu, Louis XV., Pompadour, Madame du Barry, gay dogs, and everything that is most eighteenth century, there is no longer a lieutenant of police.”