While she thus reflected prolonged quivers were darting over the sleeping lake of mist on the horizon.  Suddenly it seemed to burst, gaps appeared, a rending sped from end to end, betokening a complete break-up.  The sun, ascending higher and higher, scattering its rays in glorious triumph, was victoriously attacking the mist.  Little by little the great lake seemed to dry up, as though some invisible sluice were draining the plain.  The fog, so dense but a moment before, was losing its consistency and becoming transparent, showing all the bright hues of the rainbow.  On the left bank of the Seine all was of a heavenly blue, deepening into violet over towards the Jardin des Plantes.  Upon the right bank a pale pink, flesh-like tint suffused the Tuileries district; while away towards Montmartre there was a fiery glow, carmine flaming amid gold.  Then, farther off, the working-men’s quarters deepened to a dusty brick-color, changing more and more till all became a slatey, bluish grey.  The eye could not yet distinguish the city, which quivered and receded like those subaqueous depths divined through the crystalline waves, depths with awful forests of huge plants, swarming with horrible things and monsters faintly espied.  However, the watery mist was quickly falling.  It became at last no more than a fine muslin drapery; and bit by bit this muslin vanished, and Paris took shape and emerged from dreamland.

To love! to love!  Why did these words ring in Helene’s ears with such sweetness as the darkness of the fog gave way to light?  Had she not loved her husband, whom she had tended like a child?  But a bitter memory stirred within her—­the memory of her dead father, who had hung himself three weeks after his wife’s decease in a closet where her gowns still dangled from their hooks.  There he had gasped out his last agony, his body rigid, and his face buried in a skirt, wrapped round by the clothes which breathed of her whom he had ever worshipped.  Then Helene’s reverie took a sudden leap.  She began thinking of her own home-life, of the month’s bills which she had checked with Rosalie that very morning; and she felt proud of the orderly way in which she regulated her household.  During more than thirty years she had lived with self-respect and strength of mind.  Uprightness alone impassioned her.  When she questioned her past, not one hour revealed a sin; in her mind’s eye she saw herself ever treading a straight and level path.  Truly, the days might slip by; she would walk on peacefully as before, with no impediment in her way.  The very thought of this made her stern, and her spirit rose in angry contempt against those lying lives whose apparent heroism disturbs the heart.  The only true life was her own, following its course amidst such peacefulness.  But over Paris there now only hung a thin smoke, a fine, quivering gauze, on the point of floating away; and emotion suddenly took possession of her.  To love! to love! everything brought her back to that caressing phrase —­even the pride born of her virtue.  Her dreaming became so light, she no longer thought, but lay there, steeped in springtide, with moist eyes.