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His voice had sunk lower and lower, and now died away altogether in a final quivering of his lips. The close of the story had lulled little Pauline to sleep, and she was now slumbering with her head on Florent's shoulder. He held her with one arm, and still gently rocked her on his knee.
Quenu, however, at last recovered his calmness, and noticing Florent's fleshless, poverty-stricken appearance, exclaimed: "Ah, my poor fellow, you haven't improved in your looks since you were over yonder. For my part, I've grown fat; but what would you have!" He had indeed grown fat, too fat for his thirty years.
Her thoughts finally reverted to Florent's adversary, to Boleslas Gorka, whose wife was her friend and whom she had always found so courteous. What if she should ask him to spare her brother? It was not Florent against whom the discarded lover bore a grudge. Would he not be touched by her tears?
"Is there no means of having at once heart and head?" said Julien to himself, on reaching the Palais Savorelli, where Hafner lived, and recalling the Marquis's choler on the one hand, and on the other the egotism of Maitland, of which Florent's last words reminded him.
He was quite ignorant of Florent's name, and, after favouring him with his views on art, parted from him as he had met him, at the roadside. Florent was now alone, and at first this pleased him.
And then all at once Florent made a gesture of delight. Forgetting his fatigue, he ran after the man, and, overtaking him, tapped him on the shoulder. "Gavard!" he exclaimed. The other raised his head and stared with surprise at Florent's tall black figure, which he did not at first recognise. Then all at once: "What! is it you?" he cried, as if overcome with amazement. "Is it really you?"
But at the same time she was a prey, as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appetite to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent's sister, who continued: "Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own hand?
But at the same time she was a prey, as had been her husband several days before, to that maddening appetite to know the truth, which becomes, in certain forms of doubt, a physical need, as imperious as hunger and thirst, and she listened to Florent's sister, who continued: "Will it be a proof when you have seen the affair written in her own hand?
As the mistress treated Florent in that manner, it must be that she apprehended no hostility on the part of her lover's brother-in-law. Lydia understood it only too well, as well as the fresh proof of Florent's sentiments for Lincoln. Once more he gave precedence to the friend over the sister, and on what an occasion! The most secret wounds in her inmost being bled as she read.
It was too evident to the two men that no reconciliation would result from a collision of such a madman with a personage so difficult as the most authorized of Florent's proxies had shown himself to be. They then asked Gorka to relieve them from their duty. They had too plausible an excuse in Fanny's betrothal for Boleslas to refuse to release them. That retirement was a second catastrophe.
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