You will be a brother to us. But come, my carriage is
right here near the door."
XIV
M. Plantat stopped. His companions had not suffered a gesture or
a word to interrupt him. M. Lecoq, as he listened, reflected. He
asked himself where M. Plantat could have got all these minute
details. Who had written Tremorel's terrible biography? As he
glanced at the papers from which Plantat read, he saw that they
were not all in the same handwriting.
The old justice of the peace pursued the story:
Bertha Lechaillu, though by an unhoped-for piece of good fortune
she had become Madame Sauvresy, did not love her husband. She was
the daughter of a poor country school-master, whose highest ambition
had been to be an assistant teacher in a Versailles school; yet she
was not now satisfied. Absolute queen of one of the finest domains
in the land, surrounded by every luxury, spending as she pleased,
beloved, adored, she was not content. Her life, so well regulated,
so constantly smooth, without annoyances and disturbance, seemed to
her insipid. There were always the same monotonous pleasures,
always recurring each in its season.
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