Oh! that miserable room, overflowing with gloom and ennui! The lamp gave a dim light.

The supper, hastily prepared, had left in the room the odor of the poor man's kitchen.

And Risler, intoxicated with joy, talking with increasing animation, laid great plans! All these things tore your heart, and made the treachery still more horrible by the contrast between the riches that eluded your outstretched hand and the ignoble mediocrity in which you were doomed to pass your life.
Sidonie was seriously ill for a long while.

As she lay in bed, whenever the window-panes rattled behind the curtains, the unhappy creature fancied that Georges's wedding-coaches were driving through the street; and she had paroxysms of nervous excitement, without words and inexplicable, as if a fever of wrath were consuming her.
At last, time and youthful strength, her mother's care, and, more than all, the attentions of Desiree, who now knew of the sacrifice her friend had made for her, triumphed over the disease.

But for a long while Sidonie was very weak, oppressed by a deadly melancholy, by a constant longing to weep, which played havoc with her nervous system.
Sometimes she talked of travelling, of leaving Paris.