After sundry adventures she had returned
home, and he had taken her back in a spirit of Christian resignation and
forgiveness. She haunted him as his living disgrace, but he grew more
and more indifferent and at last ceased suffering from these distresses.
Heaven took him out of his wife's hands in order to restore him to the
arms of God, and so the voluptuous pleasures he had enjoyed with Nana
were prolonged in religious ecstasies, accompanied by the old stammering
utterances, the old prayers and despairs, the old fits of humility which
befit an accursed creature who is crushed beneath the mire whence he
sprang. In the recesses of churches, his knees chilled by the pavement,
he would once more experience the delights of the past, and his
muscles would twitch, and his brain would whirl deliciously, and the
satisfaction of the obscure necessities of his existence would be the
same as of old.
On the evening of the final rupture Mignon presented himself at the
house in the Avenue de Villiers. He was growing accustomed to Fauchery
and was beginning at last to find the presence of his wife's husband
infinitely advantageous to him. He would leave all the little
household cares to the journalist and would trust him in the active
superintendence of all their affairs.
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