"Chevalier, we both love the same woman, and that woman is our brother's
wife; do not let us thwart each other: I am master of my passion, and can
the more easily sacrifice it to you that I believe you are the man
preferred; try, therefore, to obtain some assurance of the love which I
suspect the marquise of having for you; and from the day when you reach
that point I will withdraw, but otherwise, if you fail, give up your
place civilly to me, that I may try, in my turn, whether her heart is
really impregnable, as everybody says."

The chevalier had never thought of the possibility of winning the
marquise; but from the moment in which his brother, with no apparent
motive of personal interest, aroused the idea that he might be beloved,
every spark of passion and of vanity that still existed in this automaton
took fire, and he began to be doubly assiduous and attentive to his
sister-in-law. She, who had never suspected any evil in this quarter,
treated the chevalier at first with a kindliness that was heightened by
her scorn for the abbe. But, before long, the chevalier,
misunderstanding the grounds of this kindliness, explained himself more
clearly. The marquise, amazed and at first incredulous, allowed him to
say enough to make his intentions perfectly clear; then she stopped him,
as she had done the abbe, by some of those galling words which women
derive from their indifference even more than from their virtue.

At this check, the chevalier, who was far from possessing his brother's
strength and determination, lost all hope, and came candidly to own to
the latter the sad result of his attentions and his love. This was what
the abbe had awaited, in the first place for the satisfaction of his own
vanity, and in the second place for the means of carrying out his
schemes. He worked upon the chevalier's humiliation until he had wrought
it into a solid hatred; and then, sure of having him for a supporter and