With such an intractable temper, the day that followed his victory was seldom one of happiness; the ruder the attack, the more the resistance had lasted, the more his vanity suffered. In the warmth of action he forgot the wounds of his self-love; but after success he felt intensely those bleeding wounds, and his disposition again resumed its ascendancy.
When the fever of his unbridled will, which had constrained M. de Brévannes to marry Bertha, had subsided, he began to regret his marriage very deeply. Yes, he was ashamed of his alliance with an obscure and poor girl, when he reflected on the wealthy alliances to which he might have aspired, and for which the charming qualities, the beauty, and pure mind of Bertha, were hardly a recompense. He believed that he was continually the butt of sarcastic comment, and could not find sufficient raillery to vindicate his ridiculous marriage of affection.
M. de Brévannes was deceived. Several persons, when they saw him marry a lovely, virtuous, and poor girl, gave him credit for a generous and noble spirit, and admired him, and vaunted his singular disinterestedness, and he was absolved, by anticipation, from all the torments which he would inflict on a woman for whom he had done so much.
Some regarded Bertha's conduct as a master-piece of trick and skill; others jeered at M. de Brévannes and his love-match, because they were of a class that mocks at all the world.
No one suspected the real motive of this marriage, and that M. de Brévannes' obstinacy had urged him to it, at least as much as his love.
One last trait of M. de Brévannes' disposition.
For the four years he had been married, Bertha, more loving, more resigned than ever, had not given him the slightest cause of complaint, although he had openly committed frequent infidelities, and sometimes given her rivals of very low degree; the wretched woman had wept her tears of bitterness in secret, but never made any complaint.
In spite of this patience—in spite of her perfect gentleness, M. de Brévannes sometimes gave himself up to inconceivable suspicions and jealousy, and under the most frivolous pretexts.
This violent jealousy was by no means a proof of De Brévannes' love. If he went into a rage at the mere thought (utterly false and unjust) that his wife might be faithless to him, it was because Bertha's fault would have covered (as he thought), with unextinguishable ridicule, this love-match, for which he had sacrificed so much. M. de Brévannes desired, at least, to be able to vaunt the irreproachable and exemplary conduct of the fair and obscure woman whom he had chosen.
After they had been eighteen months wedded, M. de Brévannes, becoming very tired of his happiness, had travelled in Italy for several months, leaving his wife under the care of Pierre Raimond, whose austere morality he fully recognised.