Mouret, gazing about, had just felt something grand in himself; and, in the shiver of triumph with which his flesh trembled, in the face of Paris devoured and woman conquered, he experienced a sudden weakness, a defection of his strong will which overthrew him in his turn, beneath a superior force. It was an unreasonable necessity to be vanquished in his victory, the nonsense of a warrior bending beneath the caprice of a child, on the morrow of his conquests. He who had struggled for months, who even that morning had sworn to stifle his passion, yielded all at once, seized by the vertigo of high places, happy to commit what he looked upon as a folly. His decision, so rapid, had assumed all at once such energy that he saw nothing but her as being useful and necessary in the world.
The even
