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Without any special interest in my love, not beginning by deciding that I was loved, she placed, side by side, those of Gilberte's actions that had seemed to me inexplicable and her faults which I had excused. Then, one with another, they took on a meaning.
Some soldiers had collected in a house across the way from the factory in the Rue Maqua, and were so boisterous in their rejoicings that the Captain, noticing Gilberte's annoyance, went and silenced them, remarking that he himself thought their uproar ill-timed. Toward the close of the month M. de Gartlauben was in position to render some further trifling services.
As for Bergotte, that infinitely wise, almost divine old man, because of whom I had first, before I had even seen her, loved Gilberte, now it was for Gilberte's sake, chiefly, that I loved him.
Gilberte's hands within hers: "Let me scold you, my dear," said she, "for having received thus a poor young man who was only trying to please you." Excepting her mother, too weak to take her defence, and her brother, who was debarred from interfering, the young girl understood readily, that, in that parlor, every one, overtly or tacitly, was against her.
He responded politely to the salutations of Gilberte's companions, even to mine, for all that he was no longer on good terms with my family, but without appearing to know who I was. On one of these sunny days which had not realised my hopes, I had not the courage to conceal my disappointment from Gilberte.
She now recalled Gilberte's nervous abruptness, her exaggerated affection and the kind of beaming happiness in which she seemed to exist latterly and that so pleased the comte. She reined in her horse, as she wanted to think, and the quick pace disturbed her ideas. As soon as the first emotion was over she became almost calm, without jealousy or hatred, but filled with contempt.
She was thinking of the days of their girlhood, and how Gilberte's father, Captain de Vineuil, an old naval officer who had been made collector of customs at Charleville when his wounds had incapacitated him for active service, hearing his daughter cough and fearing for her the fate of his young wife, who had been snatched from his arms by that terrible disease, consumption, had sent her to live at a farm-house near Chene-Populeux.
How was it that Julien's frequent absence from home, his renewed attention to his toilet, his better temper had told her nothing? Now she understood Gilberte's nervous irritability, her exaggerated affection for herself and the bliss in which she had appeared to be living lately, and which had so pleased the comte.
It is proper to add that Sedan, which is very straitlaced in its notions of propriety, has always been inclined to frown on Charleville, the city of laughter and levity. And then again the marriage would never have been effected but for the fact that Gilberte's uncle was Colonel de Vineuil, who it was supposed would soon be made a general.
"Name his accomplices." "And suppose he had no proofs of their complicity to offer? He was the cashier of the Mutual Credit; and it is from his cash that the millions are gone." Mlle. Gilberte's conjectures had run far ahead of that sentence. Looking straight at Marius, "Then," she said, "you believe, as M. Chapelain does, that M. de Thaller " "Ah! M. Chapelain thinks "
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