The times of her weakness were precisely those when her hatred for Mme. Chambannes was strongest and when she was most intolerant towards her father. Their behavior seemed to her more revolting, more absurd, more ludicrous than at other times. She found her consolation in mistaking for contempt the jealousy which their happiness at being together roused in her.
The acute consciousness of her own lack of attractiveness and of her isolation led her to formulating wishes all of which were impossible.
Ah! were she but beautiful; were she simply one of those seductive women over whom a few men disputed among one another and who could choose! That she could be a woman, in short, excite desires, repulse assaults, lead the warring life of her sex instead of turning white in an unnatural existence, busy with mental work and the distractions of the learned!...
Yet, lacking the needed charms, how could she change her life? How could she try to please with her bony hands, discolored eyes and thin lips which had pleased but once and then not more than for eight days?
In her discouragement, she reached a point when she felt jealous of the street girls she met passing the Boulevard Saint Michel, the grisettes. There were times when she would have readily given up everything, her knowledge, her honor and that of her family. She remembered also that there had been women, famous for their wit but too ugly to be loved, who had indulged in clandestine debauchery; and she secretly read over again with a sensual shivering the historians of scandals who related such facts. Sometimes, when she returned home at dusk, she heard a ma footsteps following her. What would he do? Was he going to address her? Although she was sure she would defend herself, yet she felt almost a vain hope that he would.... One evening, in the rue de Rennes, she was emboldened to turn round: she saw an old gentleman of M. Rainda age who smiled at her with knowing grimaces. She hurried away, stumbling, full of rage, deception and disgust with herself.
She found no peace until the day was ended and she slipped into her bedsheets after blowing out her candle. There was to her no more delicious moment than this one. She lay on her back and let the tide of sleep gently come up to her. Her limbs became paralyzed; her thoughts ran into each other; she had a feeling that her body was leaving her and the darkness of night favored this reassuring mirage. Because she no longer saw her own homeliness, Mlle. Raindal gained more audacity. Her soul at last freed and naked, as it were, bravely soared away on the wings of love. Whom, then, did she invoke in her adorations? Albârt? Another man? Sleep carried her away before she could be definite, and during the hours that followed, she stretched herself out, panting in the midst of strange dreams which were forgotten the next morning.
But she measured the nothingness of her days according to the feverish fullness of her nights. She was tortured throughout the mornings with the anxieties that affect old age. When would it all end? Had the valor of her heart, of her reason and of her mind forever vanished? Or would her sorrow gradually wear itself out, as it had done before, for lack of remedies and relief?... These queries filled her with anguish. She held her pillow tight against herself and crushed her lips in it, for fear they might hear her through the door, as on the occasion when M. Raindal had found her sobbing.
One afternoon, at the Bibliothèque Nationale, she was standing before an oak desk, examining the huge folio of the Corpus inscriptionum aegyptiacarum, when a shadow suddenly passed over the pages. She looked up and recognized Boerzell, the dismissed suitor, the young Assyriologist of the Saulvard party. Facing her, leaning on the other slope of the desk, he greeted her smilingly.
“How do you do, mademoiselle!” he asked. His affectionate eyes blinked behind the crystal of his glasses. “Hm! It seems to me that you indulge in very frivolous reading!”
“Do I?” Thérèse said, and returned his smile.... “This is nothing to what I have been asking for?”