He soon
perceived that she listened to him with pleasure, and he judged
from this that she was a decidedly superior woman, much better than
her husband. He had no wit, but possessed an inexhaustible fund of
anecdotes and adventures. He had seen so many things and known so
many people that he was as interesting as a chronicle. He had a
sort of frothy fervor, not wanting in brilliancy, and a polite
cynicism which, at first, surprised one. Had Bertha been
unimpassioned, she might have judged him at his value; but she had
lost her power of insight. She heard him, plunged in a foolish
ecstasy, as one hears a traveller who has returned from far and
dangerous countries, who has visited peoples of whose language the
hearer is ignorant, and lived in the midst of manners and customs
incomprehensible to ourselves.
Days, weeks, months passed on, and the Count de Tremorel did not
find life at Valfeuillu as dull as he had thought. He insensibly
slipped along the gentle slope of material well-being, which leads
directly to brutishness. A physical and moral torpor had succeeded
the fever of the first days, free from disagreeable sensations,
though wanting in excitement.
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