Sidonie became his one engrossing thought, and he discovered that until then he had not lived.

As for her, her love was made up of vanity and spite.

The thing that she relished above all else was Claire's degradation in her eyes.
Ah! if she could only have said to her, "Your husband loves me--he is false to you with me," her pleasure would have been even greater.

As for Risler, in her view he richly deserved what had happened to him.

In her old apprentice's jargon, in which she still thought, even if she did not speak it, the poor man was only "an old fool," whom she had taken as a stepping-stone to fortune.