The count was not touched thereby. His wife had
gone? That meant nothing to him; they would see what would happen later
on. And again he was seized with anguish, and gazing with a look of
terror at the door, the walls, the ceiling, he continued pouring forth
his single supplication:
"Take me away! I cannot bear it any longer! Take me away!"
M. Venot took him away as though he had been a child. From that
day forth Muffat belonged to him entirely; he again became strictly
attentive to the duties of religion; his life was utterly blasted. He
had resigned his position as chamberlain out of respect for the outraged
modesty of the Tuileries, and soon Estelle, his daughter, brought an
action against him for the recovery of a sum of sixty thousand francs,
a legacy left her by an aunt to which she ought to have succeeded at the
time of her marriage. Ruined and living narrowly on the remains of his
great fortune, he let himself be gradually devoured by the countess,
who ate up the husks Nana had rejected. Sabine was indeed ruined by the
example of promiscuity set her by her husband's intercourse with the
wanton. She was prone to every excess and proved the ultimate ruin and
destruction of his very hearth.
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