And with that he breathed hard, as though he were free once more.

Oh, that naked, cruel monster, roasting away like any goose and slavering over everything that he had respected for forty years back.
The moon had come out, and the empty street was bathed in white light.
He felt afraid, and he burst into a great fit of sobbing, for he had grown suddenly hopeless and maddened as though he had sunk into a fathomless void.
"My God!" he stuttered out.

"It's finished! There's nothing left now!" Along the boulevards belated people were hurrying.

He tried hard to be calm, and as the story told him by that courtesan kept recurring to his burning consciousness, he wanted to reason the matter out.

The countess was coming up from Mme de Chezelles's country house tomorrow morning.
Yet nothing, in fact, could have prevented her from returning to Paris the night before and passing it with that man.