He was but dust, ever threatened with illness and collapse.

In the depths of his seeming virility there was merely girlish _abandon_; and he was simply a weak, good-natured fellow, liable to every stumble.

It was on the occasion of a visit which he had paid with his mother to the Asylum of the Invalids of Labour that he had first seen Eve, whom he continued to meet; his mother, closing her eyes to this culpable connection in a sphere of society which she treated with contempt, in the same way as she had closed them to so many other acts of folly which she had forgiven because she regarded them as the mere lapses of an ailing child.
Moreover, Eve had made a conquest of Madame de Quinsac, who was very pious, by an action which had recently amazed society.

It had been suddenly learnt that she had allowed Monseigneur Martha to convert her to the Roman Catholic faith.

This thing, which she had refused to do when solicited by her lawful husband, she had now done in the hope of ensuring herself a lover's eternal affection.